Get your facts straight, the Black Hand was a Serbian Nationalist group.
Sure, we firebombed cities, we dropped the atomic bombs, and we did all this stuff terrible, crappy stuff.
Guess what? We weren't the aggressors.
The point of World War II was to cause as much demoralization, harm, ruin to a country's populace as possible. The Brits firebombed Dresden and Leizpig, the Luftwaffe bombed civilian targetse in London instead of military installations (which, in hindsight, would have been the much better choice). And of course, you have the concentration camps.
When you look at it that way, nobody is a good guy and everybody's a bad guy.
But that's retarded.
You have to look at the aggressors. In this case, it is just a simple, "they started it first". We were on formal/good relations with Japan right until their invasion of Manchuria (when the military seized power), would we have dropped two bombs and killed 200k people instantly? No.
Hitler...on the other hand...
Anyways, when you say that there was no clear good guy and no clear bad guy, you might have a point, but I'm tired of your pseudo-intellectualism. In a war, you can't have gray sides, you ALWAYS attribute your side to the righteous cause. And in this case, the American people were so commited to war because they had been attacked, not the other way around. They saw what was happening in Europe, they favored intervention (though not military intervention). The correct proverb here is, "mess with one of our boys, you mess with the whole crew".
Now, it's a whole different story on the Japanese/German front. Rommel himself tried to assassinate Hitler. There were many underground movements to undermine the Nazi regime. Tons of people tried to assassinate Hitler. His own populace wasn't even behind the war, just his SS and his generals (who controlled the military). Yes, he had a large number of fanatics, but he had even more disgruntled people.
Japan...Japan was taken control by hardline military lunatics. After they invaded Manchuria and pushed into China...well, have you heard of the Rape of Nanking? I don't suppose you didn't. Well, let me boil it down for you:
Fathers were forced to rape daughters. Pregnant mothers were tortured and killed. Killing Contests (first to 100 wins! Quite literally.) Mass execution. COOKING people in massive boiling pots.
Even the Nazi SS officers who witnessed such events recoiled in horror. You know you're absolutely EVIL when you make an SS puke.
Yeah, and that's just the tip of the iceburg. You've heard of all the "medical experiments" the Japanese tried, I'm sure.
I might take this a bit too far because I am Chinese, but still, I'm sick of what the Japanese have done, and I'm sick with the way the Japanese REFUSE to prosecute war criminals and whitewash their crimes in their textbooks.
So yeah, we might have had internment camps for the Japs (which were no where near the gulags and concentration camps), but the US, Canada, Great Britain, and France were the clear good guys.
Unfortunately, the total description of the Japanese invasion of China in American schools tends to go something like this--
"Then the Japanese invaded parts of China and did some bad things."
Endquote. Most of us have simply never been told much of what went on there.
Back on the good vs evil topic, while the Allies may not have been 100% "the good guys", and the Axis may not have been 100% "the bad guys", overall the distinction between good vs evil was still much clearer in this war than any other. The preponderance of evil was present on the Axis side in much greater proportion then ever before. And that had something to do with the public fascination with the war.
WW2 games are "fun" because both sides are <u>ALMOST</u> even in technology. You didn't have one side launching laser-guided missiles at their enemies, softening them up before invading. You didn't have guns that are accurate at 1000 yards squaring off against regulars who couldn't shoot accurately past 200 yards (okay, maybe in the Russian front, but it's not our fault their "army" consisted of whoever they could throw at the Germans!) The "war" was balanced. That's why it was so scary. That's why it was so memorable.
Up until the US joined, Germany had a GREAT chance of succeeding in taking all of Europe through the use of Blitzkrieg and other superior tactics (I'm not going to argue them holding Europe, that always ends up a messy, messy affair.) The Good vs. Evil is very true, however. The winners usually write history, but they were careful after WW2 to not paint the Germans as sadistic evil cruel starters of everything bad in europe for the past bajillion years, which they owe everyone lots of money because they surrendered and therefore we are the ultimate, we're leet, woot, we sure lied about our plans for your surrender didn't we (COUGH the US President warned the Euros about imposing too many conditions on the Germans COUGH) Bottom line is this--Everybody did atrocious things. The winners are the good side because they DID have the moral right, the losers are the evil side because they chose poorly what to fight for.
<b>Everyone should read up on the Japanese in Asia.</b> If even half to a quarter of what is documented is true, you can see why Sino-Japanese relations are bad. Nowadays both sides want too much from the other, and refuse to meet in the middle. On the A-bomb. The bottom line on the A-bomb is that it saved hundreds of thousands of lives. It really is one of the WORST moral decisions anyone can face (kill a few to save the many.)
I hope people grow up about this. very few, if any wars have said sides that truly can take a stance of moral superiority in all aspects. WW2 isn't one of them. We all have bad apples, and worse ones.
World War II was the last great celebrated war. Countries tend to put war heros on pedistals. Winning in war gives a nation pride, at least when they have been commited to it. There was alot of anxiety over WWII while we plugged away at eachother, and its end brought about tremendous relief and new-found respect for the fighting men and women who had saved the United States, nay the world.
That <b>alone</b> makes WWII games so popular. The singular celebration has fed on itself and now WWII is regarded with respect and shrouded in honor. To express concerns about what happened and why we fought back then, the way it has been done for nearly every war since, is still considered travisty and hardly attempted.
Because in war, there are no good sides and bad sides. We would have been content to sit on our hands will billions died, if not for Pearl Harbor, and of course, the outstanding war debts owed to us by Germany.
"War is declared for materialistic reaons and fought for morale values."
Well, there's probably 3 reasons for the popularity of WW2:
1. The game spans a myriad of terrain and countries. Islands, cities, hedges (an interesting geographical challenge no war will ever see again)...pretty much everything. Games let you pick from a variety of countries to soldier for. I'm partial to being German and Russian myself (too much American and British weaponry in single player campaigns). Which actually ties into the next point...
2. As stated somewhere above: The technology gap between countries was very limited; each country has its own little nuanced weaponry. Americans have a Thompson, Germans have an MP40, Russians have a PPSh. I think the double front aspect of the European theatre gives it a wider popularity over Asia (along with more urban terrain).
3. The honorable soldier aspect. Although this applies a lot more to American and British (sure, why not Canadian, too <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> ) troops, it can also apply to Russian and German (and Japanese and Italian) troops once a broader knowledge of history is achieved.
There might be a good or evil "If God is on our side, who the hell could be on there's?" aspect...but that kind of happens in every war for the winner.
<!--QuoteBegin-Rapier7+Jul 11 2005, 12:57 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Rapier7 @ Jul 11 2005, 12:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> In a war, you can't have gray sides, you ALWAYS attribute your side to the righteous cause. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yep, always attribute your side to the righteous cause. It'll let your leaders get away with things like the Rape of Nanking and the Holocaust.
What the hell are you talking about?
I am not saying that the Allies were not the real "good guys" of WW2 (they were). However, it is wrong to think every side was equally bad in WW2, that's just madness. The Axis were the aggressors and I'm sure you all know what else they did. Dropping a nuclear bomb on an enemy country for psychological effect and to end the war is a lot better than killing and torturing random civilians. Don't think I'm insensitive to this. My grandfather was nearly killed in an Allied firebombing (forget which city exactly, but I think it was the biggest one in the war). And you know what? He didn't hate them, he moved here. And that's why I'm American. The real bad guys to him were the Soviets, who would go on to occupy Lithuainia and steal his family's money.
Wait a sec, I'm just confusing myself now... Russia was with the Allies, too... bah.
<!--QuoteBegin-Liku+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Liku)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Have you ever seen any cooler weapons then WWII? Damn those things rule.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Modern weapons are better - but the MG-42 is still friggin' awesome.
QuaunautThe longest seven days in history...Join Date: 2003-03-21Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
edited July 2005
<!--QuoteBegin-Rapier7+Jul 11 2005, 10:57 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Rapier7 @ Jul 11 2005, 10:57 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Get your facts straight, the Black Hand was a Serbian Nationalist group.
Sure, we firebombed cities, we dropped the atomic bombs, and we did all this stuff terrible, crappy stuff.
Guess what? We weren't the aggressors.
The point of World War II was to cause as much demoralization, harm, ruin to a country's populace as possible. The Brits firebombed Dresden and Leizpig, the Luftwaffe bombed civilian targetse in London instead of military installations (which, in hindsight, would have been the much better choice). And of course, you have the concentration camps.
When you look at it that way, nobody is a good guy and everybody's a bad guy.
But that's retarded.
You have to look at the aggressors. In this case, it is just a simple, "they started it first". We were on formal/good relations with Japan right until their invasion of Manchuria (when the military seized power), would we have dropped two bombs and killed 200k people instantly? No.
Hitler...on the other hand...
Anyways, when you say that there was no clear good guy and no clear bad guy, you might have a point, but I'm tired of your pseudo-intellectualism. In a war, you can't have gray sides, you ALWAYS attribute your side to the righteous cause. And in this case, the American people were so commited to war because they had been attacked, not the other way around. They saw what was happening in Europe, they favored intervention (though not military intervention). The correct proverb here is, "mess with one of our boys, you mess with the whole crew".
Now, it's a whole different story on the Japanese/German front. Rommel himself tried to assassinate Hitler. There were many underground movements to undermine the Nazi regime. Tons of people tried to assassinate Hitler. His own populace wasn't even behind the war, just his SS and his generals (who controlled the military). Yes, he had a large number of fanatics, but he had even more disgruntled people.
Japan...Japan was taken control by hardline military lunatics. After they invaded Manchuria and pushed into China...well, have you heard of the Rape of Nanking? I don't suppose you didn't. Well, let me boil it down for you:
Fathers were forced to rape daughters. Pregnant mothers were tortured and killed. Killing Contests (first to 100 wins! Quite literally.) Mass execution. COOKING people in massive boiling pots.
Even the Nazi SS officers who witnessed such events recoiled in horror. You know you're absolutely EVIL when you make an SS puke.
Yeah, and that's just the tip of the iceburg. You've heard of all the "medical experiments" the Japanese tried, I'm sure.
I might take this a bit too far because I am Chinese, but still, I'm sick of what the Japanese have done, and I'm sick with the way the Japanese REFUSE to prosecute war criminals and whitewash their crimes in their textbooks.
So yeah, we might have had internment camps for the Japs (which were no where near the gulags and concentration camps), but the US, Canada, Great Britain, and France were the clear good guys. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Summed up very well.
To elaborate on the "Rape of Nanking", I have a few examples of things they did.
Taking-turns gang raping a woman till she bled to death.
Knocking out two men, putting them in a burlap sack, throwing a grenade in, then tossing it into the water. If one didn't kill them the other did.
Gassing a town with knockout gas, then waking them each up to watch them kill each member of the village through cutting them in the front to have the entrails spread out.
I'm surprised that to this day no one has ever made a game about one of the villages in which a Chineseman and a Japanese traitor wiped out the Japanese force there, then went into hiding and helped along the anti-takeover.
Edit: Btw, you can have grays in war, but generally theres "White->Light Gray->Dark Gray->Black"- no neutrals. For example, for Iraq, America would probably constitute Dark Gray. In WW2, we'd probably be White- while the Nuke was bad, it saved more of both their, and our, population.
Just to provide a bit of balance to this thread: the Americans firebombed Japanese cities using napalm and later magnesium thermite bombs, in all killing approximately 500,000 people (mostly civillians). That's more than the atomic bombs killed. Long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened, Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya had been reduced to matchsticks.
QuaunautThe longest seven days in history...Join Date: 2003-03-21Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
<!--QuoteBegin-SoulSkorpion+Jul 11 2005, 06:24 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SoulSkorpion @ Jul 11 2005, 06:24 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Just to provide a bit of balance to this thread: the Americans firebombed Japanese cities using napalm and later magnesium thermite bombs, in all killing approximately 500,000 people (mostly civillians). That's more than the atomic bombs killed. Long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened, Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya had been reduced to matchsticks. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> But thats over the course of several months, as far as I know. Not in a single moment per place.
<!--QuoteBegin-Mantrid+Jul 11 2005, 01:02 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Mantrid @ Jul 11 2005, 01:02 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-aeroripper+Jul 10 2005, 11:37 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (aeroripper @ Jul 10 2005, 11:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I mean hey, even the US jumped on the bandwagon and (horribly) wiped two cities off the face of the planet and we should be heros for this? I don't see how that can be considered "good" even weighed against all the other worse stuff that was going on. But i guess its all justified when it saved potentionally many american lives right? Thanks Trumann! American lives are worth more than Japanese lives anyways... </sarcasm>. Even the japanese in china killed lots of people as well, in one instance making bridges out of the dead bodies. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Didn't the Emperor of Japan make a statement along the lines that Japan wouldn't surrender until every Japanese person was dead?
If thats true, then you can look at it two ways: More lives were saved, or, the United States looked at that statement and said, "Okay, we can do that." <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah, the thing is, Japan was killing lots of people and so and so, so if they hadn't surrend, I think more people would have died than the amount killed in the US bombings. So the US "helped" Japan and other people, by bombing them, making them surrend, ending wars and stuff, which would have led to more deaths, more than the bombs. Also nowadays some people in Japan, didn't know what Japan actually did to deserve the bombs, so the goverment lied saying they didn't do anything or something like that.
<!--QuoteBegin-Petco+Jul 12 2005, 10:34 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Petco @ Jul 12 2005, 10:34 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Mantrid+Jul 11 2005, 01:02 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Mantrid @ Jul 11 2005, 01:02 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-aeroripper+Jul 10 2005, 11:37 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (aeroripper @ Jul 10 2005, 11:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I mean hey, even the US jumped on the bandwagon and (horribly) wiped two cities off the face of the planet and we should be heros for this? I don't see how that can be considered "good" even weighed against all the other worse stuff that was going on. But i guess its all justified when it saved potentionally many american lives right? Thanks Trumann! American lives are worth more than Japanese lives anyways... </sarcasm>. Even the japanese in china killed lots of people as well, in one instance making bridges out of the dead bodies. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Didn't the Emperor of Japan make a statement along the lines that Japan wouldn't surrender until every Japanese person was dead?
If thats true, then you can look at it two ways: More lives were saved, or, the United States looked at that statement and said, "Okay, we can do that." <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah, the thing is, Japan was killing lots of people and so and so, so if they hadn't surrend, I think more people would have died than the amount killed in the US bombings. So the US "helped" Japan and other people, by bombing them, making them surrend, ending wars and stuff, which would have led to more deaths, more than the bombs. Also nowadays some people in Japan, didn't know what Japan actually did to deserve the bombs, so the goverment lied saying they didn't do anything or something like that. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Bull****.
There was widespread feeling in Japan that America wouldn't stop until every Japanese was dead, a feeling <i>bolstered</i> by the firebombings and nuking.
In any case, <i>the atomic bomb did not end the war</i>. No, Qua, the firebombings happened over a period of a few weeks overall, not months - they destroyed cities in a handful of days. After the atomic bombs were dropped, the feeling among the militarists was "we've suffered worse; the firebombs did more damage" - it was only the intervention of the Emperor that stopped them from fighting on.
[edit]Here, my reply <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=93898&view=findpost&p=1489870' target='_blank'>here</a>, though over-the-top for that thread, is fitting here[/edit]
<!--QuoteBegin-Petco+Jul 11 2005, 09:34 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Petco @ Jul 11 2005, 09:34 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Yeah, the thing is, Japan was killing lots of people and so and so, so if they hadn't surrend, I think more people would have died than the amount killed in the US bombings. So the US "helped" Japan and other people, by bombing them, making them surrend, ending wars and stuff, which would have led to more deaths, more than the bombs. Also nowadays some people in Japan, didn't know what Japan actually did to deserve the bombs, so the goverment lied saying they didn't do anything or something like that. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> I suggest you try some research and answer some of these questions:
How many Japanese prime ministers were killed and what was the emperor's stance on the war before the invasion of China? Was there a negotiation underway before Hiroshima? If yes, what were the conditions demanded on both sides? What were the conditions the US settled with Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What were Eisenhower and MacArthur's stance on the atomic bombing?
WW2 is slowly passing into folklore, as the people who experienced it die.
I guess it's because we've made this thing ideological. The past always becomes a lot more easy to define when you're looking back; we remember the goods or the bads and none of the realities. The WW2 era is fading, and it is no longer in poor taste to glorify every aspect of it. I guess that's happened to everybody throughout history, before mass communication ruined everything.
What, you thought Romulus was a good guy? Alexander? Naw. They're just remembered as these titans because stories of them were passed down, largely, by word of mouth. While it's true that if there's one thing that makes a story better it's embellishment, the fact remains that this does not lend itself to accurate history. Maybe John Henry was just a normal fella, but folklore sure won't remember him that way.
Maybe in six decades, this war in Iraq will have been handled in the same, irresponsible way by popular history. Maybe our grandchildren will eat it up, just like we do, and <i>we'll</i> be the old guys sitting in an armchair, shaking our heads because they just didn't experience it like we did.
<!--QuoteBegin-Dubbilex+Jul 11 2005, 09:57 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Dubbilex @ Jul 11 2005, 09:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The WW2 era is fading, and it is no longer in poor taste to glorify every aspect of it. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Battlefield 2 and such glorify Desert Storm and even the modern war in Iraq, don't they?
LikuI, am the Somberlain.Join Date: 2003-01-10Member: 12128Members
<!--QuoteBegin-TommyVercetti+Jul 11 2005, 05:22 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (TommyVercetti @ Jul 11 2005, 05:22 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Liku+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Liku)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Have you ever seen any cooler weapons then WWII? Damn those things rule.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Modern weapons are better - but the MG-42 is still friggin' awesome. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> But everything now it's a sleak black with a bunch of... stuff. Though that's kinda what the MG-42 is, and it is definitely bitchin'.
Comments
Sure, we firebombed cities, we dropped the atomic bombs, and we did all this stuff terrible, crappy stuff.
Guess what? We weren't the aggressors.
The point of World War II was to cause as much demoralization, harm, ruin to a country's populace as possible. The Brits firebombed Dresden and Leizpig, the Luftwaffe bombed civilian targetse in London instead of military installations (which, in hindsight, would have been the much better choice). And of course, you have the concentration camps.
When you look at it that way, nobody is a good guy and everybody's a bad guy.
But that's retarded.
You have to look at the aggressors. In this case, it is just a simple, "they started it first". We were on formal/good relations with Japan right until their invasion of Manchuria (when the military seized power), would we have dropped two bombs and killed 200k people instantly? No.
Hitler...on the other hand...
Anyways, when you say that there was no clear good guy and no clear bad guy, you might have a point, but I'm tired of your pseudo-intellectualism. In a war, you can't have gray sides, you ALWAYS attribute your side to the righteous cause. And in this case, the American people were so commited to war because they had been attacked, not the other way around. They saw what was happening in Europe, they favored intervention (though not military intervention). The correct proverb here is, "mess with one of our boys, you mess with the whole crew".
Now, it's a whole different story on the Japanese/German front. Rommel himself tried to assassinate Hitler. There were many underground movements to undermine the Nazi regime. Tons of people tried to assassinate Hitler. His own populace wasn't even behind the war, just his SS and his generals (who controlled the military). Yes, he had a large number of fanatics, but he had even more disgruntled people.
Japan...Japan was taken control by hardline military lunatics. After they invaded Manchuria and pushed into China...well, have you heard of the Rape of Nanking? I don't suppose you didn't. Well, let me boil it down for you:
Fathers were forced to rape daughters.
Pregnant mothers were tortured and killed.
Killing Contests (first to 100 wins! Quite literally.)
Mass execution.
COOKING people in massive boiling pots.
Even the Nazi SS officers who witnessed such events recoiled in horror. You know you're absolutely EVIL when you make an SS puke.
Yeah, and that's just the tip of the iceburg. You've heard of all the "medical experiments" the Japanese tried, I'm sure.
I might take this a bit too far because I am Chinese, but still, I'm sick of what the Japanese have done, and I'm sick with the way the Japanese REFUSE to prosecute war criminals and whitewash their crimes in their textbooks.
So yeah, we might have had internment camps for the Japs (which were no where near the gulags and concentration camps), but the US, Canada, Great Britain, and France were the clear good guys.
"Then the Japanese invaded parts of China and did some bad things."
Endquote. Most of us have simply never been told much of what went on there.
Back on the good vs evil topic, while the Allies may not have been 100% "the good guys", and the Axis may not have been 100% "the bad guys", overall the distinction between good vs evil was still much clearer in this war than any other. The preponderance of evil was present on the Axis side in much greater proportion then ever before. And that had something to do with the public fascination with the war.
Up until the US joined, Germany had a GREAT chance of succeeding in taking all of Europe through the use of Blitzkrieg and other superior tactics (I'm not going to argue them holding Europe, that always ends up a messy, messy affair.) The Good vs. Evil is very true, however. The winners usually write history, but they were careful after WW2 to not paint the Germans as sadistic evil cruel starters of everything bad in europe for the past bajillion years, which they owe everyone lots of money because they surrendered and therefore we are the ultimate, we're leet, woot, we sure lied about our plans for your surrender didn't we (COUGH the US President warned the Euros about imposing too many conditions on the Germans COUGH)
Bottom line is this--Everybody did atrocious things. The winners are the good side because they DID have the moral right, the losers are the evil side because they chose poorly what to fight for.
<b>Everyone should read up on the Japanese in Asia.</b> If even half to a quarter of what is documented is true, you can see why Sino-Japanese relations are bad. Nowadays both sides want too much from the other, and refuse to meet in the middle.
On the A-bomb. The bottom line on the A-bomb is that it saved hundreds of thousands of lives. It really is one of the WORST moral decisions anyone can face (kill a few to save the many.)
I hope people grow up about this. very few, if any wars have said sides that truly can take a stance of moral superiority in all aspects. WW2 isn't one of them. We all have bad apples, and worse ones.
That <b>alone</b> makes WWII games so popular. The singular celebration has fed on itself and now WWII is regarded with respect and shrouded in honor. To express concerns about what happened and why we fought back then, the way it has been done for nearly every war since, is still considered travisty and hardly attempted.
Because in war, there are no good sides and bad sides. We would have been content to sit on our hands will billions died, if not for Pearl Harbor, and of course, the outstanding war debts owed to us by Germany.
"War is declared for materialistic reaons and fought for morale values."
1. The game spans a myriad of terrain and countries. Islands, cities, hedges (an interesting geographical challenge no war will ever see again)...pretty much everything. Games let you pick from a variety of countries to soldier for. I'm partial to being German and Russian myself (too much American and British weaponry in single player campaigns). Which actually ties into the next point...
2. As stated somewhere above: The technology gap between countries was very limited; each country has its own little nuanced weaponry. Americans have a Thompson, Germans have an MP40, Russians have a PPSh. I think the double front aspect of the European theatre gives it a wider popularity over Asia (along with more urban terrain).
3. The honorable soldier aspect. Although this applies a lot more to American and British (sure, why not Canadian, too <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> ) troops, it can also apply to Russian and German (and Japanese and Italian) troops once a broader knowledge of history is achieved.
There might be a good or evil "If God is on our side, who the hell could be on there's?" aspect...but that kind of happens in every war for the winner.
Yep, always attribute your side to the righteous cause. It'll let your leaders get away with things like the Rape of Nanking and the Holocaust.
What the hell are you talking about?
I am not saying that the Allies were not the real "good guys" of WW2 (they were). However, it is wrong to think every side was equally bad in WW2, that's just madness. The Axis were the aggressors and I'm sure you all know what else they did. Dropping a nuclear bomb on an enemy country for psychological effect and to end the war is a lot better than killing and torturing random civilians. Don't think I'm insensitive to this. My grandfather was nearly killed in an Allied firebombing (forget which city exactly, but I think it was the biggest one in the war). And you know what? He didn't hate them, he moved here. And that's why I'm American. The real bad guys to him were the Soviets, who would go on to occupy Lithuainia and steal his family's money.
Wait a sec, I'm just confusing myself now... Russia was with the Allies, too... bah.
<!--QuoteBegin-Liku+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Liku)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Have you ever seen any cooler weapons then WWII? Damn those things rule.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Modern weapons are better - but the MG-42 is still friggin' awesome.
Sure, we firebombed cities, we dropped the atomic bombs, and we did all this stuff terrible, crappy stuff.
Guess what? We weren't the aggressors.
The point of World War II was to cause as much demoralization, harm, ruin to a country's populace as possible. The Brits firebombed Dresden and Leizpig, the Luftwaffe bombed civilian targetse in London instead of military installations (which, in hindsight, would have been the much better choice). And of course, you have the concentration camps.
When you look at it that way, nobody is a good guy and everybody's a bad guy.
But that's retarded.
You have to look at the aggressors. In this case, it is just a simple, "they started it first". We were on formal/good relations with Japan right until their invasion of Manchuria (when the military seized power), would we have dropped two bombs and killed 200k people instantly? No.
Hitler...on the other hand...
Anyways, when you say that there was no clear good guy and no clear bad guy, you might have a point, but I'm tired of your pseudo-intellectualism. In a war, you can't have gray sides, you ALWAYS attribute your side to the righteous cause. And in this case, the American people were so commited to war because they had been attacked, not the other way around. They saw what was happening in Europe, they favored intervention (though not military intervention). The correct proverb here is, "mess with one of our boys, you mess with the whole crew".
Now, it's a whole different story on the Japanese/German front. Rommel himself tried to assassinate Hitler. There were many underground movements to undermine the Nazi regime. Tons of people tried to assassinate Hitler. His own populace wasn't even behind the war, just his SS and his generals (who controlled the military). Yes, he had a large number of fanatics, but he had even more disgruntled people.
Japan...Japan was taken control by hardline military lunatics. After they invaded Manchuria and pushed into China...well, have you heard of the Rape of Nanking? I don't suppose you didn't. Well, let me boil it down for you:
Fathers were forced to rape daughters.
Pregnant mothers were tortured and killed.
Killing Contests (first to 100 wins! Quite literally.)
Mass execution.
COOKING people in massive boiling pots.
Even the Nazi SS officers who witnessed such events recoiled in horror. You know you're absolutely EVIL when you make an SS puke.
Yeah, and that's just the tip of the iceburg. You've heard of all the "medical experiments" the Japanese tried, I'm sure.
I might take this a bit too far because I am Chinese, but still, I'm sick of what the Japanese have done, and I'm sick with the way the Japanese REFUSE to prosecute war criminals and whitewash their crimes in their textbooks.
So yeah, we might have had internment camps for the Japs (which were no where near the gulags and concentration camps), but the US, Canada, Great Britain, and France were the clear good guys. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Summed up very well.
To elaborate on the "Rape of Nanking", I have a few examples of things they did.
Taking-turns gang raping a woman till she bled to death.
Knocking out two men, putting them in a burlap sack, throwing a grenade in, then tossing it into the water. If one didn't kill them the other did.
Gassing a town with knockout gas, then waking them each up to watch them kill each member of the village through cutting them in the front to have the entrails spread out.
I'm surprised that to this day no one has ever made a game about one of the villages in which a Chineseman and a Japanese traitor wiped out the Japanese force there, then went into hiding and helped along the anti-takeover.
Edit: Btw, you can have grays in war, but generally theres "White->Light Gray->Dark Gray->Black"- no neutrals. For example, for Iraq, America would probably constitute Dark Gray. In WW2, we'd probably be White- while the Nuke was bad, it saved more of both their, and our, population.
...easily one of the best books i have read in a long time, and (glad to say) moves along at a quicker pace then some of his other books....
But thats over the course of several months, as far as I know. Not in a single moment per place.
And as still: Japan awoke the sleeping giant.
Didn't the Emperor of Japan make a statement along the lines that Japan wouldn't surrender until every Japanese person was dead?
If thats true, then you can look at it two ways: More lives were saved, or, the United States looked at that statement and said, "Okay, we can do that." <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, the thing is, Japan was killing lots of people and so and so, so if they hadn't surrend, I think more people would have died than the amount killed in the US bombings. So the US "helped" Japan and other people, by bombing them, making them surrend, ending wars and stuff, which would have led to more deaths, more than the bombs. Also nowadays some people in Japan, didn't know what Japan actually did to deserve the bombs, so the goverment lied saying they didn't do anything or something like that.
Didn't the Emperor of Japan make a statement along the lines that Japan wouldn't surrender until every Japanese person was dead?
If thats true, then you can look at it two ways: More lives were saved, or, the United States looked at that statement and said, "Okay, we can do that." <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, the thing is, Japan was killing lots of people and so and so, so if they hadn't surrend, I think more people would have died than the amount killed in the US bombings. So the US "helped" Japan and other people, by bombing them, making them surrend, ending wars and stuff, which would have led to more deaths, more than the bombs. Also nowadays some people in Japan, didn't know what Japan actually did to deserve the bombs, so the goverment lied saying they didn't do anything or something like that. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Bull****.
There was widespread feeling in Japan that America wouldn't stop until every Japanese was dead, a feeling <i>bolstered</i> by the firebombings and nuking.
In any case, <i>the atomic bomb did not end the war</i>. No, Qua, the firebombings happened over a period of a few weeks overall, not months - they destroyed cities in a handful of days. After the atomic bombs were dropped, the feeling among the militarists was "we've suffered worse; the firebombs did more damage" - it was only the intervention of the Emperor that stopped them from fighting on.
[edit]Here, my reply <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=93898&view=findpost&p=1489870' target='_blank'>here</a>, though over-the-top for that thread, is fitting here[/edit]
I suggest you try some research and answer some of these questions:
How many Japanese prime ministers were killed and what was the emperor's stance on the war before the invasion of China?
Was there a negotiation underway before Hiroshima?
If yes, what were the conditions demanded on both sides?
What were the conditions the US settled with Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
What were Eisenhower and MacArthur's stance on the atomic bombing?
I guess it's because we've made this thing ideological. The past always becomes a lot more easy to define when you're looking back; we remember the goods or the bads and none of the realities. The WW2 era is fading, and it is no longer in poor taste to glorify every aspect of it. I guess that's happened to everybody throughout history, before mass communication ruined everything.
What, you thought Romulus was a good guy? Alexander? Naw. They're just remembered as these titans because stories of them were passed down, largely, by word of mouth. While it's true that if there's one thing that makes a story better it's embellishment, the fact remains that this does not lend itself to accurate history. Maybe John Henry was just a normal fella, but folklore sure won't remember him that way.
Maybe in six decades, this war in Iraq will have been handled in the same, irresponsible way by popular history. Maybe our grandchildren will eat it up, just like we do, and <i>we'll</i> be the old guys sitting in an armchair, shaking our heads because they just didn't experience it like we did.
Battlefield 2 and such glorify Desert Storm and even the modern war in Iraq, don't they?
Modern weapons are better - but the MG-42 is still friggin' awesome. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
But everything now it's a sleak black with a bunch of... stuff. Though that's kinda what the MG-42 is, and it is definitely bitchin'.