I can't believe I actually need to say this, and I'm not even sure whether responding to such lunacy is a good idea, but:

No. Mass rape, kidnapping and murder of civilians is not how wars have historically been won, and they are certainly not "necessary". Wars are won when the enemy no longer has the ability or willingness to fight. Committing atrocities against civilians rarely accomplishes anything more than increasing of the enemy, unless their situation was already hopeless to begin with.

>I can't believe I actually need to say this, and I'm not even sure whether responding to such lunacy is a good idea, but:

>No. Mass rape, kidnapping and murder of civilians is not how wars have historically been won, and they are certainly not "necessary"

I cant believe I actually need to say this but trucks leave tire tracks in the dirt. You're gonna have a hell of a time dragging an army (especially a conscript army that needs far more ideological motivation than a professional army) across a country without leaving some ancillary destruction behind.

There is massive, massive, incredible difference between those things happening as "ancillary destruction" and those things being part of "the mindset needed to win a war"

There have been very few semi-symmetrical conflicts in the last ~70+ years. The fire-bombing of Tokyo, Dresden and total destruction of a substantial number of civilian infrastructure in Germany and Japan were considered absolutely necessary to win the war. Similarly the mind-number number of casualties the Soviet army sustained even in the battle of Berlin, at the end of the war or the losses it absorbed in the battles of Kharkiv, in the defense of Moskau and St. Petersburg have no parallel in modern warfare.

>The fire-bombing of Tokyo, Dresden and total destruction of a substantial number of civilian infrastructure in Germany and Japan were considered absolutely necessary to win the war.

I think this only helps my point, because with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the bombings of London, Dresden, Tokyo, Stalingrad and many other cities were of absolutely minimal value in ending the war except insofar as it damaged military targets in those cities - and in many cases it was outright counterproductive (e.g. London).

Name a single war, or battle in which atrocities against civilians have helped the aggressors, in a situation where the defending side wasn't already militarily defeated (e.g. German or Soviet occupied countries)? It didn't help in Chechnya, Vietnam, or Yugoslavia (either during WWII or in the 90s).

Even the impact of the nuclear bombs is heavily debated. The Imperial Japanese military still wanted to continue the war, and the Emperor was less concerned with the plight of civilians than what was going to happen to himself after the war.

The only universally effective method of winning a war is destroying the enemy's ability to fight. Cruelty towards non-belligerents is not required to do this.

Considering that there's never actually been a war without rape and pillaging, you're making a pretty bold claim with no evidence.

Well... for all the atrocities the Germans committed the Poles that I have talked to that survived the war were uniformly appreciative of the restraint of the German officers and conscripts occupying their villages[+], as opposed to the Russians who pretty much destroyed the country they supposedly liberated, killing and raping civilians as they went along.

So there definitely are differences in how the rules of engagement are interpreted from one actor to another. Needless to say this doesn't justify anything the Germans did and I acknowledge that Russia was instrumental in beating the - actual - Nazi's but still, that difference does stand out.

It's a pretty tricky thing because technically the Russians were 'on our side' and the Germans were clearly the enemy and just writing about it in an objective way is hard enough keeping in the back of your mind everything else that the Nazi's were up to.

+ Note that the Germans committed plenty of war crimes in Poland as well and that there were quite a few really bad things that happened in areas under German occupation, but on a relative scale they were considered the 'lesser of two evils' from the point of view of the civilian population that was not directly in the crosshairs of the Germans.

As a German who got some first / second hand accounts from children of Polish survivors and Polish survivors I disagree. The German army and other occupying forces did awful things in Poland and not just to the Jewish population. Just because the violence and killing was maybe more methodical and less unstructured like randomly raping civilians, doesn't make it any less awful. Even the initial attack that resulted in the occupation of Poland was done without regard to the lives of the civilian population.

Yes they did. And still compared to the stories about the Russians they showed considerable restraint. This is not about absolutes, it is about relatives.

Having no control over your army and the atrocities it commits because the higher ups simply don't care at all about the kind of image they are projecting is exactly the reason why things are utterly out of control in Ukraine today. Lack of discipline, lack of enforcement and in general using the army as a weapon of terror is what is happening, there is zero restraint.

I cannot speak to rape nor Russia vs Germany, but for the suffering of the Poles at German hands I am compelled to add this from my eyewitness family history lest German abuse of Poland be discounted.

It is not often discussed, but millions of Poles, not just Jews or Jewish Poles were killed in concentration camps.

This (sans "millions" which is my own research finding) was my grandfather's observation as a US officer liberating such camps- there were a lot of non Jewish Poles in such places.

"Lebensraum" came through Polish genocide from what I can tell.

(I am not Polish.)

Although the part where non-Jewish poles were in concentration camps, while true, also led to them being forced to participate in the genocide, which still was primarily directed at Jews, while everyone else was doing (mostly) forced labor. The conditions in the forced Labour camps were obviously horrible and children especially routinely starved while in captivity with their mothers.

All 6 siblings of my partner’s grandmother were killed on arrival in Ausschwitz, as were her parents. She was spared by Mengele and subjected to experiments.

Ultimately weighing atrocities against each other is not super productive. But the myth of a “clean Wehrmacht” had been so persistent and convenient that it took decades to root out in German main stream opinion.