Downed allied pilot in Iszkaszentgyörgy Hungary in 1944

[Dénes Bernád]

Gabor is right (except for the last sentence, Larry is a well respected aviation historian and author).
One should not condone war crimes, regardless who did it and what excuse he might have had, if any.

[Larry deZeng]

Thanks, D.B. My sarcastic response to Gabor was for his gratuitous injection of the “American War Criminals” theme in a thread that, up to his unsolicited and unwarranted comment, had been civil, scholarly, balanced and even polite. He is not the first to do this is a thread dealing with the air war over Hungary. His reply to my response raises even more eyebrows in that he appears to excuse Hungarian war crimes by act of omission leaving one with the impression that he either does not recognize them or he exonerates them. Yes, war crimes are unpardonable, but we should strive to keep this topic off TOCH! where it almost always develops into a flame war full of nationalistic insults. If Mr. G. wants to pursue his theme, I might suggest he do so on the War Crimes sub-forum on http://forum.axishistory.com/index.php. They have a number of threads there on this subject.

Larry

[John Beaman]

Watch it guys. No personal attacks.

[HGabor]

Larry,

Do not get me wrong: war crimes are not the centre of my interest at all. Neither time, nor intention to dig into them. But I do not understand why you say I ignore Hungarian war crimes. I think I was clear enough: “A crime is a crime regardless of the side”. I never said that it was correct what those civilians tried to do. BUT: if we ignore the other side of the coin, what some A.A.F. pilots did to civilians and some of their defenseless opponents in the air and/or on the ground, we will never be able to understand the civilians’ reaction to those captured pilots! What do you think the farmers in Texas would have done eg. to captured Japanese pilots if they reached the American mainland and started to burn down cities, strafing fellow farmers and their cattle? The answer is obvious. Only the whole picture can be understood with equal measures and standards. Bringing up the Holocaust in this topic was dangerous as well as very misleading. I have pointed out the language problem in Lt. Crawford’s story. That word in his memories is not even close in the two languages! So why should I let other people come to wrong conclusions? This is why history gets manipulated and changed over and over again. And finally: do not forget that the guy saving Lt. Crawford’s life (I mean IF this was that Iszkaszentgyorgy case in the original question) was also Hungarian. That’s all. Thanks,

Gabor

[Larry deZeng]

BUT: if we ignore the other side of the coin, what some A.A.F. pilots did to civilians and some of their defenseless opponents in the air and/or on the ground, we will never be able to understand the civilians’ reaction to those captured pilots! What do you think the farmers in Texas would have done eg. to captured Japanese pilots if they reached the American mainland and started to burn down cities, strafing fellow farmers and their cattle?

The Americans, Brits and other Allies committed many, many war crimes during World War II and no researcher worth his salt would disagree with that. Axis History Forum is chock full of examples. But we should avoid this topic here for reasons I previously stated. It's a subject that needs to be approached with tact, balance and nuanced prose to avoid stepping on tender toes. Since an ounce of caution is worth a pound of cure, skirting the issue entirely is the best policy as TOCH! does not have a dedicated sub-forum reserved for the discussion of war crimes and allegations.

Larry

[HGabor]

Larry,

OK, I aggree. Have a nice weekend!

Gabor

[Larry deZeng]

And you have a nice weekend, too, i.e., with no tornadoes (U.S.) and no flooding (Europe)!

Larry

[mars]

Originally Posted by HGabor

"Momentary loss of humanity and self-control"... To me it is still a war crime. Anybody could use it as a cheap excuse. Do not try to wash it clean or make it look less barbar than any other murder in history. A crime is a crime regardless of the side or who won the war and who lost it. The nazi war propaganda did not allow the general public to know all of the real details of what was going on in the camps. Those rural civilians did not speak English at all. The word 'Jew' sounds completely different in Hungarian. So I am not sure what Lt. Crawford was really hearing from them... Just relax and think again.

It is a common knowledge that American and Japanese fighter pilots had the disturbing habit to shoot bailed out enemy aircrews, this kind of actions certainly do not fit the common accepted moral code of warriors. But the reason behind of this behavior, well, are a little bit complicated, some did it just in the heat of combat, fighing blood is up, just want to shoot any enemy who are still alive, others do it because that is the tradition of his unit, "Everyone in my group are doing this, so that I will do that too", or as many American and Japanese veterans explain: a bailed out enemy is still a dangerous enemy, if he survies, he would come at you next time in a new plane, and he can kill you.
Intentionally Killing unarmed civilians on the ground is a war crime of course, but the unarmed civilians killed by strafing are small number comparing to unarmed civilians killed by mass bombing, and sadly I have to admit that such mass bombing such as Luftwaffe bombing Warsaw, London and Coventry or RAF bombing Hamburg and Dresden or American nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate war actions.