Brutality in the Desert

[Guest Mike]

Did hte fridge pour the petrol over the salami?

[The_Enigma]

Or did the Salami pour the petrol over the fridge?

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Perhaps everything had already been replaced with an exact duplicate.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Wow, no posts for over 30 hours. I broke the forum...

[The_Enigma]

Prehaps we have ran the course of what we can talking about in regards to Salamis?

Where is the topic starter anyway?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by the_enigma:

Prehaps we have ran the course of what we can talking about in regards to Salamis?

Hardly at all. And there is probably lots to be said about ancient naval tactics generally, rather than just at Salamis.

Originally posted by the_enigma:

Where is the topic starter anyway?

I think somebody bricked up the bridge he lived under.

All the best,

John.

[The_Enigma]

But i didnt expect building permission to be given so soon!

You know they need to write reports, hold enquiries, draw up plans, then public enquiries all to say yes to discussing the idea of actually drawing up any sort of a building plan ...

[Dandelion]

Originally posted by CousinPeePee:

The facts are there.

Flamethrowers, heavy artillery, mechanized infantry, bayonet charges.

You call that a walk in the park? Do you actually think that in the middle of an attack you would stop shooting the enemy and let them all go?

The point is that there is too much fantasy associated with this theatre being somehow noble. Think about Tobruk - do you really think that they would let scouts who entered the wire get out alive?

Give me a break.

I align with the posters vainly attempting to reach out here, and grasp the inner meaning of this argument. Focus is the chivalric repute of the African campaign in WWII, and the point driven is that this is a myth, no?

Your argument being

a) The region fought in was harsh.

- Certainly, that's why no people live there. It is either brutal drought or diseaseinfested swamps, or deserts of salt for that matter. The hostility of the terrain however has no bearing on the mentioned chivalric repute of this theatre of operations. The most beautiful paradise islands of the Pacific did not encourage the combatants there to display chivalric conduct of any degree whatsoever, so I really don't think terrain matters much.

The use of modern weaponry made for a lethal battle environment.

- No argument there. But the chivalric repute of the Desert war does not entail that soldiers did not die, in all the manners typical for soldiers. Burned, maimed, flattened, slashed, hacked and shot into little charred pieces. One can do all that and still be chivalric when going about it you know. You simply abstain fom doing this type of damage to person or persons who are obviously not combatants. It also helps being respectful towards defeated opponents, but this is optional. Neither French nor American troops in Africa where very respectful towards defeated Axis troops. They simply treated them quite correctly and this sufficed.

Since the Waffen SS were ordinary soldiers, their absence had no effect on the conduct of German armed forces in the field.

- You know this might be interpreted as an attempt at provoking the modern reader. No you probably don't because you would not have used the argument if you did but I am actually tempted to agree to a point. I'll troll along with you here a while (troll, stroll, you know - well, that's the exact amount of humor I can produce in a day).

Large sections of the German armed forces were in fact highly ideological in their approach to the war and Rommel himself was Hitlers former bodyguard and remained his protege until his demise. Though most probably too thick to grasp politics, he did make himself noticed and appreciated by the Party. I have no doubt that scores of the Axis individuals present in Africa were every bit as devoted racist and totalitarian fascist as any Waffen SS or Blackshirt man. So sure, let's agree, the presence or absence of the Party had no decisive effect on the conduct of Axis troops. But I fear you might be missing a very vital ingredient here.

There was a reason for the absence of the Party. The same reason that left the conduct of German rank and file reasonably civil. There was nobody around to murder

Well, excepting as always the hapless Libyan people who actually lived in the place where half the world had decided to fight it out on an issue not remotely relating to any of their concerns, the casualties among whom we are all blissfully ignorant of.

You see, not even devout Nazis had any real calibre racial hatred towards the (white) British or (white) Americans - that'd be rather difficult since they're mostly all a bunch of Saxons anyway. The ideological phobia against capitalism and liberalism had not remotely the same widespred fervor and scale of hysterical paranoia as that directed against socialism - in particular totalitarian socialism. The Third Reich did not go to Africa to exterminate the population there, to settle it's own population there and to forever annihilate her Nemesis. It was merely a peripheral military campaign.

The Soviet Union on the other hand, and all of her subjects, were targeted for annihilation. Every German soldier at the Eastern Front was made fully aware of it. The brutality, savagery, that was the unavoidable result of this policy spites description. It is not a matter of going berserk and mowing down surrendered enemy personell in the heat of battle, nor of shooting a man caught in wire, or laying heavy artillery barrages. It is a matter of systematic murder, arson, looting and rape on an epic scale, making millions of men perpetrators or co-perpetrators, starting a chain of reprisal and counter-reprisal, creating a cataclysmic nullification of morale, the absolute declaration of uncivilisation, dragging tens of millions of civlian populatrion down into the downboud train to hell.

In Africa, the (in wartime per se ridiculous) pretense of normality could be preserved. In fact the belligerents agreed on many central issues. None had plans to populate the desert. All reasoned in terms of races and superiority/inferiority and none of course much liked the conceived inferior races of humans - the South Africans and British alike refused to arm black Africans to fight the Germans (with some ridiculous scenes as a result, incluing spear armed garrisons of airfields under MG34 attacks). The Americans eventuallty arrived with far greater ideological conviction than the others present, and we see some interesting reactions of disgust when they find the British having tea with captured German counterparts. But not even they fielded any meaningful number of armed African-Americans and their ideological conviction apparently did not translate into the abandonment of founding principles of the USA in those days.

Because as for allied brutality against Axis members of the armed forces in Africa (seeing as there hardly were any Axis civilians to abuse), I have never actually seen any record of anything of the kind, excepting heat of battle collapse of discipline (and I always except such incidents, since I do not find them reflecting anything but the very moment they occur). I feel I should have, had there been any, because I have plowed through such heaps of apologist dung and Nazi rhetoric that you will never imagine in a million years. A work hazard of sorts, there is no discovered limit to what one will endure in order to find out exactly how many machineguns there were in a given company a given day, so to speak.

A point you might want to take up, that I at least find being of greater interest and that might stand a reasonable chance of success, is how this campaign was broadcasted in the respective belligerent nations during the war. Much of the image conveyed actually lives on in modern popular perception of it. But how close to reality is this conception in fact? You question the conceived chivalry of the campaign, one of the few matters rather undisputed because of the abundance of record confirming it, but there are many other conceptions that could not survive the insolence of closer scrutiny.

By "popular conception" I of course exclude any and all conceptions of any and all Grognards, who by definition are nowhere very popular and who would at any rate never take part in such vulgar attributes of contemporary life as anything that might risk being equipped with the prefix popular-, including all types of media. In fact the word "modern" scarcely survives in the presence of any given Grognard, except in the meaning of "modern warfare" of course.

Well, all that said, I have been quite able to amuse away yet another evening and I thank you all.

Sincerely (well...)

Dandelion

[Michael Dorosh]

And so the stories of both sides pausing after supper to listen in their respective laagers to the broadcasts from Radio Belgrade of that prewar and almost forgotten Lili Marlene by Lale Andersen are somehow mis-remembered?

A shame.

[JonS]

Yay! Dandelion's back!

[Broompatrol]

Well said, Dandelion. :cool:

[The_Enigma]

That post made me giggle, quite strangley espeically this comment:

There was nobody around to murder

:confused:

(seeing as there hardly were any Axis civilians to abuse),

When reading up on the almost forgotten East African Campaign, i found that British forces ended up iirc moving after the Italian forces had been defeated to protect the Italian colonists and to police the area ... bet the boys where a tad upset at no raping and pillaging?

On a serious note, with all the talk of race brought up.

The British fielded (aided, funded, raised, trained, fought along side etc):

Quite a few West African Brigades and two Divisions (81st and 82nd),

Several East African Brigades,

The 1st African Division (later the 11th),

The King's African Rifles (i believe they may have made up part of one of the West Afican Briagdes and divisions)

Rifle battalions raised in each of the colonies as well iirc,

The Sudan Defence Force,

The Royal Rhodesia Regiment,

Funded and armed the Ethiopian rebels,

There was "blacks" in the British army, iirc several of whom were part of the famous Coup De Main party on the 6th June,

There was also members of the Caribbean countires who fought and who under are flag.

So doesnt really seem like they had a problem with giving "blacks" guns etc

[ June 27, 2007, 01:16 PM: Message edited by: the_enigma ]

[JonS]

Enig, while broadly true, there were some significant exceptions. South African natives were used only as pioneers (labourers) and kept unarmed, as were Rhodesians and Nigerians. There are plenty of others, and whether they were armed or not depended primarily* on the political power and position of the whites in the particular province/territory/colony/whatever, and how much of a future threat returning natives with weapon and combat skills were perceived to be. This also extended to interactions with white populations - South African natives were not allowed to go to Palestine (lest they get ideas from the power struggles going on there) not were they allowed to go to Continental Europe, where they would be in a position of power over defeated, white, Italian civilian men and women.

On the other hand, black pioneers from at least one of the High Commission Territory (Basthoto, Swaziland, Bechunaland) countries went to both places and served well, and they were armed and reveived some combat training. They were also integrated into combat units as combat soldiers later in the war in order to free-up white soldiers for Op OVERLORD. They caused no problems, and reintegrated well, when they got back home after the war.

Home locatations also determined where their soldiers couldbe used. For many of the Afircan countries/colonys/etc this was within African ONLY, and new negoatiations had to be enetered into to use them on the Northern side of the Med.

All this is a rather long way of saying that there was no single, standard policy. Each place established it's own policy, and these policies were honoured by Whitehall and the British Army.

Jon

* It secondarily depended on the power and stance of the local traditional power structures. In the HC Territories, the traditional power structures were actually more important because there were virtually no white settlers there.

[ June 27, 2007, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[JonS]

BTW, when people are discussing "the Desert" it is reasonable to assume they mean the Western Desert, or that area roughly between El Alamein and Tunis. Certainly there are pockets of colonisation through that area, but just as certainly those areas were seldom fought over (eg, Jebel Akhdar), especially between Oct 1940 and Mar 1943.

The East African campaign, along with the campaigns in Syria and Iraq, are not generally considered to be part of "the Desert".

[The_Enigma]

Yes when discussing the "desert" i have been referring to the Western Desert as i have assumed others have too (Tunis is a whole other place and campaign ).

I only brought East Africa into it when referance to race was brought up to highlight Africans also fought along side our men and to try and get a better understanding of the policy regarding them, which you have gone over and appears to be very intresting stuff (if only from a slightly warped point of view).

Strange how it would appear that Indian forces (even though it appears there was some comtempt for "Indian Officers" such as the Auk because he came from the 'Indian Army' and not the British) were more readily accepted and race or relgion was not problem.

But still, it would appear that the East African Campaign and the fighting in the Middle East is more forgotten then the forgotten army!

[Dandelion]

Originally posted by the_enigma:

That post made me giggle, quite strangley espeically this comment:

The British fielded (aided, funded, raised, trained, fought along side etc):

Quite a few West African Brigades and two Divisions (81st and 82nd),

Several East African Brigades,

The 1st African Division (later the 11th),

The King's African Rifles (i believe they may have made up part of one of the West Afican Briagdes and divisions)

Rifle battalions raised in each of the colonies as well iirc,

The Sudan Defence Force,

The Royal Rhodesia Regiment,

Funded and armed the Ethiopian rebels,

There was "blacks" in the British army, iirc several of whom were part of the famous Coup De Main party on the 6th June,

There was also members of the Caribbean countires who fought and who under are flag.

So doesnt really seem like they had a problem with giving "blacks" guns etc

You must endure my ignorance, but were any of these units actually allowed to fight German troops, or allowed to enter European soil, or other soil with a white majority population?

I know that Africans were fighting in East Africa, but rather thought they were subsequently shipped off either to garrison duties throughout the (non-white) empire or to the Far East (to fight non-whites), if left in armed service at all?

Cheers

Dandelion

[JonS]

D., send me an email please?

Jon

[The_Enigma]

I dont know where they all ended up but i do know that were not all demobed and yes, the West Africans Divisions ended up in India and Burma iirc along with (if they were not included in those divisions, the Kings African Rifles).

The other battalions and defence forces listed as far as i know operated in East Africa, fighting the Italians (a force which was at least two thirds iirc native).

The British troops (including the above named units and Indian forces) once in places such Eithopia then ended up in roles to protect the Italian colonists (that being white Italians who had moved there), but am unsure for how long.

A chunk of the above listed units ended up fighting the Vichy French and also fought in the Middle East.

The Caribbean dudes am thinking of where part of the RAF and fought over the skies of Europe.

There was also "blacks" in the British Army who fought the German Army.

I dont really see why if they didnt fight the Germans it appears not to count.

Is fighting the Vichy French, the Italians or the Japanese not as worthy as fighting the German?

At any rate there was enough "white" civillians around in India, Burma, Egypt, East Africa and the Middle East...

[ June 27, 2007, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: the_enigma ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by the_enigma:

it appears there was some comtempt for "Indian Officers" such as the Auk because he came from the 'Indian Army' and not the British

I have no idea where you get that notion from.

[The_Enigma]

Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by the_enigma:

it appears there was some comtempt for "Indian Officers" such as the Auk because he came from the 'Indian Army' and not the British

I have no idea where you get that notion from. </font>

[JonS]

I'm sure both Armies held themselves to be better than the other one, but that is symptomatic of the entire British Army, right down to section level. That's hardly an example of a rift though. More like BAU.

Further more, given the frequency with which officers and units hopped between the two, and evidence that officers sought postings to the Indian Army, and the practical impossibility of finding senior officers in the British Amry who hadn't served in the Indian Army at some point, and that the Indian Army generally had more recent combat experience, and that formal qualifications (eg, psc at Quetta or psc at Camberley) were interchangeable, I think your notion has more substance in your head than in the external world.

Auchinleck got bowler-hatted because he lost the confidence on the PM, not because he was Indian Army. Slim and Montgomery were Indian Army, and they seem to have gotten on well enough. Indeed, Auchinleck would hardly have gotten to command the most important and active British theatre in the first place had there been much snobbishness about which army one was from.

[The_Enigma]

Prehaps i have then taken what ive read in the wrong light then?

Although this:

I think your notion has more substance in your head than in the external world.

Seems a tad harsh now doesnt it, was there really any need for such a comment?

I must say that i didnt mean to imply, as it seems you have taken it, that the Auk got booted out because of which Army he came from.

and the practical impossibility of finding senior officers in the British Amry who hadn't served in the Indian Army at some point

It would appear these big wigs didnt:

Ironside and Brooke

Gort, Gott, Dempsey, O'Connor, Ritchie, Bucknall, Dorman Smith, Horrocks, Crocker, Cunningham, Harding to name a few Corp and higher up commanders and staff.

hmm what about De Guingand?

It would appear these chaps didnt move into India until during the war:

Alexander, Lesse and Wavell

[ June 27, 2007, 05:41 PM: Message edited by: the_enigma ]

[Guest Mike]

Remember there were 2 different armies in India - there was teh British Army in India, and the British Indian Army. The former was "normal" British troops stationed in India, the later was the army of eth sub-continent itself.

According to Wiki the British Indian Army was somewhat less well regarded, but not massively so. However it was better paid, allowing its officers to live off their salary - something not apaprently possible to do in the British Army of the era.

This is possibly the source of any difference in status - British Indian Army offiers did not require a seperate income, hence might tended to have been of less wealthy families.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was also some jealousy involved with het pay, and of course commanding natives would have been a point of difference which could easily have been used to denigrate them.

[highliner]

it says ere,

"Auchinleck found himself the uneasy succsesor to Wavell as C-in-C Middle East Command. From first to last, throughout nearly 14 months, he fought Rommel on the one hand and the ingrained conservatism of the British army on the other".

They did`nt care for Wingate either.

Guderian was an upstart, but he was out there "laying it on the line"

the East India Company, was never "quite the thing" accordingly, but no one complained about the price of sugar.

Also mentions, that at, first Alemein, Rommel recognised `General Auchinleck ... was handling his forces with very considerable skill, and tactically better than Richie` He wasnt running off. he was `writing down` quite a bit of Rommels armour, even if it meant point blank range, with the old 25pdr`s

Monty on the other hand, had a thousand guns, just as Rommel was being `short changed`

As to whether colonial troops are allowed to wander round south london with rifles strapped to there backs? the fabled Gurkas were not allowed to bring there wives, let alone guns,

[Dandelion]

Originally posted by JonS:

D., send me an email please?

Jon

Sure thing. It's in yar ebox.

Cheers

D