Operation Gomorrah - the firestorm in Hamburg (Patreon)
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Lately, as the Allies increase their aerial campaign over Germany, and famine results from Allied nation‘s policy in Iran, and British Policy in India, I (Spartacus) have taken more, and more flak from parts of the community. I’ve even been accused of being an Nazi apologist. For not acknowledging enough that the Allies were beyond reproach because in the end the Axis were worse, and the Allies defeated them. I’ve been told I should be ashamed of myself by reporting in such a way that there is a moral equivalence.
Needless to say I vehemently disagree. The nihilists among us might say that there was no good side in this war, only a less evil side. With that too I disagree. There was a good side in this war, it just doesn’t divide in sharp lines of national borders. The good side in this war was Humanity, and those who stood up without compromise for the values that later became enshrined in the Universal Declararion of Human Rights. They were present among all belligerents, but to a much larger degree among the political leaders and officers of the United Nations Alliance than the sane group in the Axis Camp. You might even say, without being wrong, that for all practical purposes, goodness was altogether absent in Axis leadership.
When you add up the grand total of misery by war’s end by tallying how many dead each side caused through illegal, or at least immoral actions and policy, that is also quite clear. The Axis side caused tens of millions of dead that way, while the Allied “wrongful dead” toll is in single digit millions. But it’s still millions. When seen playing out like this week, by week it becomes clearer what that means. Moreover, in weeks like the ones we’re in right now it will by force be so that “the good side” caused more suffering in that given week. Right now the German Nazi mass murders are in a lull, and the Japanese are not busy with any of their horrific reprisal campaigns, while the Allies are causing more dead.
So if you dive into one of our War Against Humanity episodes in late July 1943, without knowing the rest of the series it might very well look like I’m on the wrong side of history. That’s both a strength and a weakness of our chronological format. The weakness is that you must look at all of it to get a clear picture of what the balance of good and evil is. The strength is that it exposes the effects as they were, showing us the transgressions of anyone and everyone. Thus, becomes the actors in this great drama what all humans are; complex beings of light and shade, with faults, and virtues alike. From that we can learn more than presenting them as cardboard figures of good and evil. By that we can learn both from their virtues and faults. What better way to remember them, and to honor them could there be?