Vehrec wrote:As for the Bismark, I will readily admit to the existence of a U-boat threat...but that doesn't prevent dropping rafts or sending destroyers in to pick up survivors-those ships were supposed to expose themselves to attack in any event. The British had no way of knowing how many U-boats were in the area, their capabilities and disposition were unknown, yes. But they also had to be able to see that the sea-state was fairly high which prevented the U-74 from making it's attack historically. Take the appropriate precautions but by all means, make the attempt.
Speaking for myself, it seems to me that in a war between X and Y, if X is going to pick up survivors from one of Y's ships,
Y should cooperate by not shooting X's ships while they do so. If Y refuses to cooperate, it is not unreasonable for X to refuse to risk ships and men making a rescue attempt.
If you believe that the loss of one of my destroyers justifies killing dozens or hundreds of your own men, it seems logical for me to make the reciprocal judgment and decide that the loss of one of my destroyers
does not justify saving dozens or hundreds of your own men. After all, you are my enemy, and clearly do not have my best interests in mind when you sink one of my ships. If it's a good deal for you to destroy one of my ships at the price of dooming your own men in the water, it's a bad deal for me to take the risk that this will happen.
Even ignoring that practical concern, there is still an issue of fairness: you do not have a right to presume that I will risk my life to save you when you are
actively trying to kill me while I do so.
That includes destroyers, which by this point tipped the scales at one to two thousand tons and had crews of over a hundred.
So no, I'm not going to blame the British for refusing to pick up survivors from
Bismarck.
With the
Laconia incident, we see a mirror image of this on the German side: in this case, the U-boat did decide to pick up survivors, and nearly got their fool heads blown off for it. It is natural for them to decide, at this point, that it really isn't worth trying to rescue survivors off of sinking ships, naval protocols be damned. I can't blame them for that, any more than I blame the British for not picking up survivors off
Bismarck.
Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:I don't know why it is so dificult to grasp Stuart's explanations here, it is the perfectly recognisable and characteristic logic of total war- to quote Sherman, "War is hell, and you cannot refine it." Cannot, and also should not- the more brutal and decisive it is (always supposing, of course, that brutality leads to decisiveness, which I'm not convinced of, more later)- the more likely it is to be over soon, and the world to have been changed by the outcome of the war in such a way as makes it less likely to reoccur. This also crosses into the logic of deterrence- the more terrible it is likely to be, the less likely it is to be a viable option for the state contemplating it, and the less likely it is to happen at all.
So the humanitarian end is effectively served by the practise of unlimited terror. it sounds intuitively insane, but that's military logic for you. I suspect, however, that there are at least two invalidating devils in the details.
Personally I'm inclined to agree; unfortunately, the modern era seems to have made it nearly impossible to impose restraint- too many people circling the battlefield with too much in the way of high explosives and too many itchy trigger fingers.
And, to be frank, too many people sitting a thousand miles behind the lines urging greater brutality for the sake of winning the war quicker, in every nation involved in the conflict. Three hundred years ago, the most vicious ogre of any given war would usually be found on the front lines with sword in hand; today, you're more likely to find him in an office planning a dehousing program or a labor camp.
Yes, fighting men were supposed to try to kill each other, but there was no sense being bloody-minded about it. There would be an afterwards, there was a society with no moral investment in the battlefield to judge the participants, and there was a requirement to be an officer and a gentleman. Theoretically, anyway. Limits to conduct make much more sense in the context of limited war.
There are a surprisingly large number of anecdotes suggesting how readily the peacetime-trained U-boat man reverted from being one of the Grey Wolves to rounding up survivors and pointing them in the direction of safety; what was unique about the Laconia incident was the number of survivors and the risks Hartenstein took.
Oh, according to the rules then in effect- he had heard her at gunnery practise. He knew she was armed and therefore viable as a target.
Hmm. Could you cite this? I don't disagree, I'd just like a citation.
Those invalidating devils are, first, I'm more than half convinced that the usefulness of war as a tool of statecraft is diminished by the logic of absolute ruthlessness. It means there is no longer any such thing as a minor war, and limits are only set by budget and manpower, not by objectives and ethics. The scalpels are what, in a previous generation, would be considered terrorism in their own right. This removes a lot of ethical barriers from the battlefield and indirectly weakens those in civil society also.
Hmm. Let me see if I understand you.
To take an example, control of a province might shift as a result of a war: but if the Germans had known how much it would cost them to fight World War One, even assuming they'd won, they would have been sorely tempted not to fight at all. Carving a few puppet states out of the Russian frontier and making some gains in Belgium simply wouldn't have been worth it.
So in that context, war does become less useful as a tool of statecraft- on the other hand, that's sort of the point of the deterrence argument, no? If you know that a war that started over your desire to annex a province will result in ten million dead on both sides, why bother?
Second, I very much doubt that a society that places much value on life, or law and precedent even, actually can practise unlimited war any more, for any less than unlimited aims- I think there may well be a cultural ceiling to hit here with how far a society is prepared to go, how much willingness to have force exerted on its' behalf it really has, and that ceiling falls well below what it takes to make the deterrent effect entirely believable. For most nations, anyway.
And this tends to undermine the issue I raised above, though one must tread carefully around the assumption that another society
won't practice an unlimited war. "You don't have the guts" are among the most famous last words of all time, not so?
Samuel wrote:Hartenstein appears to have been thinking according to a completely different set of moral rules born out of centuries of European limited war, or possibly more accurately a period in which power could not be projected well enough to make total war even feasible.
He was a u-boat captain. The spent their time
sinking merchant ships. I don't see how he could hold an 18th century view when his purpose was to attack civilians.
Nonsense. Commerce raiding was a major aspect of Age of Sail warfare, complete with a small mountain of customs on the subject. Ships full of civilian mariners and cargoes were routinely stopped by roving warships, and fired into if they refused to stand down.
With the weapons less deadly and the risk of a merchantman calling for reinforcements reduced, of course, the customs were
different. The
Laconia incident is an illustration of how much worse the situation had become: larger ships carrying more people, that could nonetheless be sunk instantly by a single weapon, on an ocean where the enemy's aircraft and radios meant that either side could bring reinforcements to bear in a matter of minutes.
The Age of Sail customs become nearly suicidal to follow at that point: how do you go about giving the crew of a troop transport (or an ocean liner) time to abandon ship when you know they can radio for help any time they please, and that help might well come in the form of a B-24 full of bombs within a quarter of an hour?
There are a surprisingly large number of anecdotes suggesting how readily the peacetime-trained U-boat man reverted from being one of the Grey Wolves to rounding up survivors and pointing them in the direction of safety; what was unique about the Laconia incident was the number of survivors and the risks Hartenstein took.
I'm pretty sure that is mandatory for all navys.
And yet there were navies that didn't follow it: neither side did in the Pacific, neither side did so consistently in the Atlantic. I imagine that's not least because you were putting yourself in an unprecedented amount of danger in WWII by stopping to help survivors.
I'd argue the danger was great enough that stopping to help survivors should
not be considered mandatory, especially not for ships operating alone in waters patrolled by the enemy.
Second, I very much doubt that a society that places much value on life, or law and precedent even, actually can practise unlimited war any more, for any less than unlimited aims- I think there may well be a cultural ceiling to hit here with how far a society is prepared to go, how much willingness to have force exerted on its' behalf it really has, and that ceiling falls well below what it takes to make the deterrent effect entirely believable. For most nations, anyway.
All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
- Hermann Göring
Pithy, but Vietnam illustrates how this can break down. At some point, the citizenry can damn well
see they're not in any real danger from whoever the bombs are falling on; they're not going to be fooled indefinitely.
A large part of what caused the US to pull out of Vietnam was, yes, that the American public reached the limit of its willingness to have force exerted on its behalf.