Oradour
Consider Oradour. 642 people were murdered by a German battallion there on June 10 1944, after Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann was told that a German officer was being held by the Resistance in Oradour (in Oradour-sur-Vayres, that is, which is not Oradour-sur-Glane; it was the latter that got it in the neck).
[T]he Wehrmacht regarded members of all resistance movements as guerilla terrorists who would strike quickly before merging back into civilian life. As such, reprisals were indiscriminately violent. Oradour, indeed, was not the only collective punishment reprisal action committed by German troops: other well-documented examples include the Soviet village of Kortelisy (in what is now Ukraine), the Czechoslovakian villages of Ležáky and Lidice (in what is now the Czech Republic), the Dutch village of Putten, Serbian towns of Kragujevac and Kraljevo and the Italian villages of Sant’Anna di Stazzema and Marzabotto. Furthermore, the German troops executed hostages (random or selected in suspect groups) throughout France as a deterrent.
So. There’s clearly a moral quandary here if you’re in the Resistance (and presumably if you’re not in the official Resistance but you help it when the occasion offers). You know with certainty that your activities put random guiltless people at risk. You know with certainty that any real success you have will result in anguish for a lot of people who are not the aggressors but the bystanders; in death for some and grief for others. Everything you do as part of the maquis has a high moral cost.
Of course, it’s also true that doing nothing has a high moral cost too. If you do nothing and the Germans win, the outcome will not be an end to the killing of innocents. You’re in a situation in which anything you do has a high moral cost. You’re in a nightmare.
So the Resistance in some sense is responsible for the collective punishment of other people. But in what sense? Is it responsible in the same way, albeit to a lesser degree, as the Wehrmacht? Or is it responsible in some different way. Does it make a difference who is doing what to whom, and for what reasons, and in what context? It seems to.
Intresting question,A few years ago I read a book by a polish guy who had led a resistance group during the German ocupation, the way they would get round the reprisal problem was to only kill Polish collaborators rather than German soldiers, by this method they would avoid the reprisals because even though they found the collaborators usefull the Germans held them in contempt. I think that in general the responsibility for the reprisals was with the German ocupiers not the resistance but it would seem to be prudent for the resistance to look at every operation in terms of whether it would advance the overall war aims enough to justify the reprisals that would follow,that is a dilemma I hope that none of us ever has to face.
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered” – Thomas Paine
Richard covers most of the points; I’d just add that the attitude of the local population was also probably an important factor. As a generalisation they supported Resistance activities even though they knew the consequences it might have. This must have alleviated the moral dilemma to an extent.
Well I certainly think all the (moral) responsibility was with the German occupiers – but the dilemma was still very real.
No OB, I don’t think all the moral responsibility was with the German forces.
The French had been defeated in warfare and the Govt of France had signed an armistice. The Resistance were fighting the occupation forces in a sneaky(for want of a better term) way. They struck and then melded back in with the general population. How did they expect their targets to react? Striking out against the civilian population(who is a civilian anyway?) was the only way the occupation forces could try to counter their treacherous enemy.
If you adopt certain tactics, then you should be prepared to accept the consequences of those tactics upon the enemy. If you use the civilians as your defence, then you shouldn’t be surprised if those civilians are targetted.
Disclosure: My Dad was part of the occupation forces in 1941-2.
Interesting.
Yes, you should accept the consequences of tactics, that’s what the post is about – but that’s not quite the same as allocation of moral responsibility. Your account is slightly tendentious – the French hadn’t been “defeated in warfare,” they’d been invaded, by a military whose government was bent on genocide.
If, as eaglebomber claims, it is ok to kill Monsieur Petit for the actions of Monsieur Brun, when the only connection between the two is a common citizenship, then why not kill M. Petit even if M. Brun does nothing ? In either case M. Petit has done nothing wrong.
Alternatively, using eaglebomber’s logic, what would be wrong with killing every last German for what so many of them did from 1939 to ’45 ?
Eagle bomber, a government is equivalent to a people only as far as it can claim to represent them (that was actually the reasoning behind the creation of the Force Françaises Libres) so no, the Resistance wasn’t tied up by the Vichy gov., who was actually nearly as active at fighting the resistants as the occupying troops.
As for being “defeated in warfare”, well, yes they were, emphatically. But war is not a video game, or a match of football; it doesn’t end at a pre-set time, especially if this ending means mass deportation and genocide of part of a population. In these conditions you are supposed to carry on fighting. The alternative is just too awful to contemplate.
As for your advocacy of collective punishment: do you think that the fire bombing of Dresden or Hamburg was justified by Auschwitz? Hiroshima by Nankin? 9/11 by Al-Shifa?
I take your point OB about moral responsibility being the issue. And certainly, the occupiers had the moral responsibility for the reprisals.
And for Paul’s benefit, I never suggested it was OK.
And Arnaud, I’m not advocating collective punishment. I’m saying the reprisals were a rational, but not moral, response to the actions of the resistance. A question for you, were the SS reprisals in France any different, morally, from the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden?
eaglebomber:
You are confusing the issue, by your last question.
In the case of Hamburg and Dresden, these cities were not under the control of the bombers, who would have been happy not to non-combatants.
In the case of SS reprisals, they intentionally targeted innocent people in areas under their control. Consider the infants murdered at Oradour. It cannot be argued that the resistance were hiding behind them. It would have been very easy for the SS to remove them from the group they were going to kill. That they could have done so and chose not to is the key.
Eagle Bomber,
There are other justifications for the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg and for Hiroshima, tactical and strategic justifications. As Paul said, the difference with Oradour is that that killing was a deliberate act of collective punishment and cannot be interpreted any other way.
You said: “Striking out against the civilian population(who is a civilian anyway?) was the only way the occupation forces could try to counter their treacherous enemy.” That looks like a justification to me, never mind advocacy.
Paul, they did actually remove the women(247) and children(205) from the group. These, they put all in the church so they could be firebombed separately. Only one survived.
Paul – I presume you mean “happy not to ‘target’ non-combatants”. But they still did target non-combatants didn’t they; basically because the view was that all Germans were seen as combatants or, at least, active participants in supporting the German war machine. Question – how many French, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, etc civilians did the allies kill in their bombing missions?
Arnaud – The collective punishment of a random village can also been seen as a tactical/strategic response. Killing those civilians sends a message, as Strelnikov says in Dr Zhivago. It doesn’t matter if that particular village or those civilians are not actually at “fault”.
WWII was total war. Nothing was off limits. And before you gone on, I’m not saying that that is right. The Axis committed way more acts of random civilian and military atrocities than the Allies(excepting the USSR). But that doesn’t mean that all acts by the Allies were fully justified and that all acts by the Axis were always worse.
The essential difference, I believe, is what the sides were fighting for. One side was trying to enforce a tyranny, and the other side had to do whatever was necessary (viewed through the eyes of the people on the spot at the time, not hindsight) to stop it.
On a point of information, the enacting of reprisals against a civilian population for the actions of what were called ‘franc-tireurs’ – i.e. partisans/resisters – was an accepted feature of the ‘laws of war’ as understood in Europe from their original theoretical formulation in the c16/c17… It is also accurate to point out that literally thousands of French civilians were killed by Allied bombing before and during the Normandy campaign. War is, as WT Sherman eloquently put it, “all Hell”. The only redeeming feature of it is that it is sometimes better than the alternative.
“The collective punishment of a random village can also been seen as a tactical/strategic response. Killing those civilians sends a message, as Strelnikov says in Dr Zhivago. It doesn’t matter if that particular village or those civilians are not actually at “fault”.”
Yes, I am well aware of that, Eagle Bomber. This IS the definition of collective punishment, the same collective punishment you are so careful not to justify. I am not saying that justifications for collective punishment don’t exist, I am saying they are immoral.
(That and the fact that they are tactically inept: it’s usually assumed that you cannot hold a country by strength of arms if as much as 10% of the pop is actively engaged against you. And the use of CP is more likely to increase that percentage than decrease it. Not 10% actually fighting, mind, but 10% including fighting AND logistical support. That’s a very scary statistic!)
The bombing of German cities had tactical and strategic justifications that were not related to collective punishment. As Paul said you are trying to confuse the issue. And so is Dave, there is a difference between civilian by-casualties of a military action and a military action aimed directly and specifically at civilians.
As for nothing was off-limits, sorry but that’s bullshit. The axis in his treatment of American and British war prisoners was by and large minded to follow the Geneva Conventions, so why not in its dealing with French civilian populations?
eaglebomber:
The SS could easily have separated the infants at Oradour and not killed them.
In the case of Hamburg etc , how could the bombers have done the same ?
The bombing of German cities had tactical and strategic justifications that were not related to collective punishment.
In all cases, Arnaud?