What?

No.

These issues have been debated since the beginning. They were being debated when the bombings just got started.

In Britain and America there has never been any absence of soul-searching and discussion about the bombing campaigns, from the very beginning.

I feel 2 parts of your post deserve a response:

“Further, it boggles the mind that you could question our level of support to a country that was for years about the only obstacle to German victory.”

So pay no attention to the fact that the Soviets in point of fact were Hitler’s allies during the seizure of Poland in 1939 or that Stalin’s fight against Hitler was for no better reason than that 2 thieves fell out? o_O

“The fact that Russia suffered about 20 million casualties, while we suffered about 500,000 should tell you a little about where the war was faught and who protected who.”

Or it could be an indication that as tacticians the Communists were just that inept and uncaring about their own people, ne? Certainly, no one with any sense could have anything but contempt for Stalin’s use of “penalty brigades” which I presume would be among your “20 million casualties”. I would argue that were it not for the Murmansk Run Russia would now be speaking German. The Germans themselves showed who they feared more when they pulled pilots and troops alike out of Russia in order to try to stop the Americans and the British at the Bulge. So much for the Soviets as allies! ^_^

The fact is, Feredick Hayek, Gaetano Mosca and Eric Dexler have all pointed out quite rightly that Communists and Nazis were always completely interchangeable human beings and morally indistinguishable. It was sensible to make use of the fact that Orc fought Orc. It was a mistake to be too friendly with the Orc that was on our side afterwards and to fool ourselves into thinking he was ever anything more than an Orc.

In my view, the worst History teachers are the ones that blow over wars. They are horrible to a fault. It shows that they are incapable of viewing larger contexts.

I don’t view strategic bombing as morally wrong overall, by the way, but as a tragic necessity (or on occasion a tragic mistake). Likewise our support of the Soviets, although they were worse than Hitler, they were less of threat so we were forced to support them.

But I do think our attitude toward the Soviets in the last year of the war in Europe, as deplorably naive, and the Western allies cruelty and indifference toward the defeated Axis troops and populations did on numerous occasions reach the point of a crime against humanity. That it was overshadowed by vastly worst horrors doesn’t excuse it, like the drama about the man who commits a murder during the London Blitz; because what does it matter, amidst so much death?

Of course it matters, and furthermore — for example, Jugoslavia in the 90s — these crimes are still having repercussions.

That was not my point, though. Who cares what I think. The thing is all these issues have been debated in recent decades because for so long most of them were ignored or worse. There are a few hard Left attitudes in academia (that’s old news), but it is deeply mistaken to see all WWII historical revisionism in this light.

No one said this, and even if someone had, you don’t start out as a guest at someone else’s place saying they are stupid. I forgave you because I looked at your blog which has some good stuff on it.

Behave from now on, please.

The answer in general to your question is that the morality of these actions has been debated for decades and everybody knows where they stand. My take: The Allied bombings of Germany and Japan were necessary and justiified in the face of the aggression from those countries and their own proven willingness to do the same and worse to civilian populations if they had the means to do it. They started it, we finished it. If the firebomgings were so awful, it was up to the aggrieved party to offer peace terms to make them stop. The air attacks netted out to a shorter war and fewer lives being lost on all sides. Richard Overy, possibly the best expert on the air campaigns reached this conclusion, and I agree with him. I disagree that Stalin was “as bad as” Hitler. Maybe to his own people, but their sad fate is not within the scope of our responsibility. Stalin did not declare war on us, Hitler did. Hitler decided to fight us all. He was an idiot. We were not friendly with the Soviet Union. We armed our enemy’s enemy. That is not friendship it is pragmatism. We got them to do the dying. Good. Better their people than ours. That is not moral callousness, it is political realism. As to the prisoners returned to the Russians, they were Soviet citizens in German uniform. Their sad fate is not our responsibility. There was no reason to do anything else with them but return them to the country they came from. They cast their lot with the Germans and the Germans lost. The Germans killed 20 million Russians. The people who wore their uniform were not likely to get a warm welcome.

Before June 1941, while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect and the Nazi’s and the Soviets were carving up Eastern Europe, American anti-war sentiment was strongly promoted by American Communists and other fellow travelers. After the Nazi’s turned on USSR with Operation Barbarosa, however, American anti-war sentiment virtually disappeared. And once we actually entered the war, the leftists became strong pro-war advocates to help save our new ally – the Soviet Union.

My own response has been to create blogs that are booklists with each entry being that day’s releases in that particular field. I make the lists for myself as much as for other readers and time being what it is can only produce two of these on an onging basis, Civil War Book News and Long War Book News.

JJ, that is very cynical, but probably accurate. If you cannot go off on a Quixotic venture when you are 19 years old, when can you?

Kirk, the teaching profession in your country, as in ours, with certain noble exceptions, is committed to the destruction of their own countries. The US teaching establishment is influenced by people like Bill Ayers, who tried to bomb the Pentagon. He is a much smarter and more effective enemy now.

I am an undergrad history student in Canada and trust me all I heard about in high school was how evil we were in regards to the Japanese in Canada. For some reason, the social history of things is deemed in to be much more important…in a survey course of western history in gr 12, our teacher didn’t do anything with military history because it “wasnt that important compared to our social history”. It was crazy enough that for English class in gr 12, which should be about studying lit and such, there was a prescribed book on the Japanese internment and we constantly discussed how evil and horrible the Canadian government was. While the book was good and the episode a definite dark mark in Canadian history, the fact that it was discussed in an English class with no talk against the Japanese, god forbid, makes it seems like the curriculum wants high-schoolers to learn how evil we were and not say how Canada had the 3rd largest per-capita army world-wide in WW2. Sad really.

Don’t do it. Academic historians despise military history. It is very, very hard to get a job as a history professor even without having a mark of cain like wanting to specialize in military history.

If your goal is to write military history, but not to teach, you do not need a PhD. Just do it – go write military history! A PhD is a lot of time and expense for something that is really of no utility unless you want an academic job. It’s a union card, and that’s about it. Plenty of good history is written by people without one.

I got the following comment from a friend whom I sent a copy of your post:

Hunh. Good article. There’s an interesting parallel that I hadn’t thought of until I saw this:

Anyway, I’m wondering if one part of the reason for the decline in academic military history (aside from its being icky) might be that it’s practical.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/ws/

offers a Masters degree in War Studies entirely on-line:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/ws/ps/tpg/wimw/

There are over a hundred students on the programme now about half of them serving military officers many of those on operational deployment–the other half are civilians often working in security, international relations, journalism or cognate fields.

I am the academic director of this programme and so clearly a partisan on the matter but frustated and unfulfilled potential students of war need not remain so.

They may not have been any better than the Nazis, but they were fighting the Nazis and not fighting us. There is no record of friendliness to them, only help in every way to the fullest extent possible to survive long enough to let the West build up the strength to invade Normady. It is obvious that from your vantage point now, you have no idea how close everyone was to losing to the Nazis and how devasting that loss would have been to us all. Further, it boggles the mind that you could question our level of support to a country that was for years about the only obstacle to German victory. The fact that Russia suffered about 20 million casualties, while we suffered about 500,000 should tell you a little about where the war was faught and who was protecting who.

I substitute taught in several suburban Detroit school systems a while back and if the class was doing World War II or somehow we got on the topic, I would discuss why the bombs were necessary to end the war and what would have happened to Japan, China, and across the Far East if the war hadn’t ended when it did. In most cases the students had literally never been presented with such arguments, and those who were aware of them generally had come across them on their own.

When I say send a personalized email to each professor, I mean research each one and refer to their work and books and demonstrate some diligence.

You may want to send paper mail, with your email address to respond to.

The only way you will succeed in this is if you get into a program where you have some friends and allies among the professors. If you just go into some college and let it be known that you are interested in military history you will get poor grades, no respect, no references, etc. You need to start building contacts and working this politically from the beginning. Without at least one mentor to protect you, you will not be able to do it.

That is how I see it.

Same thing in the private sector, really. Being good is not enough. You need to be good and have people who will protect you.