Anyone who has not yet read Bunnies’ second-most recent post in this thread should immediately do so. It may be long, but it’s well worth the read. You’re much better off reading one post like that than ten standard-issue shorter posts!
Bunnies correctly noted there have been problems associated with IQ testing in the past. Like other scientific fields, psychometrics is still something of a work in progress. Nevertheless, progress is being made. For example, it is no longer necessary to give someone a traditional IQ test to measure his or her IQ. Instead that IQ can be estimated by a physical analysis of the brain: its myelination level (more is better), nerve conduction velocity, the size of the neocortex, etc. Or, someone can be given a reaction time test, with faster reaction times corresponding with higher levels of I.Q. By measuring physical brain characteristics such as myelination levels, or the speed of reaction times, the efficacy of I.Q. tests and their cultural bias can be evaluated.
Unfortunately, psychometrics has sometimes been deliberately been misrepresented to the public, for example by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was raised as a red diaper baby, and as an adult was active in Marxist organizations. He lacked credibility in serious psychometric circles; a fact which did not prevent him from becoming a media darling, or from distorting and twisting psychometric conclusions in his communications with the general public. Nothing Gould has written about psychometrics has been published in any serious journal. Everything he has to say on the subject should be automatically dismissed as Marxist propaganda.
On the subject of war crimes: both sides violated the laws of war during WWII; and each side is responsible for the civilian deaths which resulted from its own violations of the laws of war. FDR and Churchill are responsible for millions of hunger-related deaths which occurred on German-held soil during the war, because they’d used starvation as a weapon against civilians. Had the Axis won the war, it would have been their responsibility to conduct postwar trials, and to execute those responsible for the Allied food blockade. Each of the other four items on my earlier list also constitutes an act of genocide for which those responsible could and should have been executed.
As an aside: over 80% of German military deaths were experienced at Soviet hands. One of the provisions of Yalta required that captured German servicemen be turned over to whichever Allied nation against which they had done the most fighting. This meant that the overwhelming majority of German servicemen were handed over to the Soviets. Unsurprisingly, many would join the long list of victims of Soviet mass murder.
As for the defense that the Germans had it coming: the laws of war apply not just to aggressor nations, but also to nations which respond to aggression. A few years ago, for example, the U.S. launched an aggressive war against Iraq. Suppose, for example, that Hussein had argued that, since the U.S. was the aggressor, the Iraqi government was released from having to follow the laws of war. And was fully justified in pursuing a course of action which would lead to millions of civilian deaths within the U.S. It’s doubtful that a fair and impartial court would find such arguments particularly credible. The Allies’ attempts to justify their own murder of millions of civilians are similarly lacking in credibility.
The fault for the start of WWII is not as cut and dried as some would have us believe. After WWI, the French allowed Poland to occupy a portion of German land, thereby (deliberately?) creating an ongoing bone of contention between Germany and Poland. In May of 1939, this contention was significantly augmented. France promised to launch a general offensive against Germany should the latter attack Poland. The promised French offensive against Germany would force the latter to commit the vast majority of its military strength to its western front. On paper, Franco-Polish forces were stronger than their German counterpart, making a conflict with Germany a very winnable one. Together, Britain and France had much more industrial capacity than Germany; which would give the Allies a commanding advantage in a long war. That advantage would be enhanced by weapons purchases from the United States.
Polish diplomatic policy of 1939 was based on the false notion that France would honor its promise to launch a general offensive against Germany. Guided by this belief, the Polish government adopted an anti-German foreign policy in 1939. The following is a quote from John Toland’s book Adolf Hitler. Toland’s book has been praised by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and Library Journal. (pp. 566 - 567.)
Bernt [a German government official] thought the reported number of German nationals killed by Poles too small and simply added a nought. At first Hitler refused to believe such a large figure but, when Berndt replied that it may have been somewhat exaggerated but something monstrous must have happened to give rise to such stories, Hitler shouted, “They’ll pay for this! Now no one will stop me from teaching these fellows a lesson they’ll never forget! I will not have my Germans butchered like cattle!” At this point Hitler went to the phone and, in Berndt’s presence, ordered Keitel to issue “Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of the War.”
Given that France had absolutely no intention of launching its promised general offensive against Germany, the above-described Polish stance of 1939 was clearly in error. To deliberately antagonize Germany into throwing the first punch makes sense only if you are 100% sure that radical leftist French politicians like Daladier can be trusted to keep their promises. (Promises, incidentally, which had been made in secret.)
In 1938, Hitler had given the Polish a portion of Czechoslovakia’s land, with the expectation that this would encourage Poland to adopt a pro-German foreign policy. Had Daladier not interfered by making false promises to Poland, there is a strong chance Poland would have sided with Germany in its cold war against the Soviet Union. Or, barring that, Poland might at least have maintained a benign neutrality toward Germany. A neutrality similar to that maintained by Spain or Sweden.
I would also like to address the British and Germans’ efforts to bomb each other. In 1940, Germany did not possess a strategic bomber with four engines and four propellers. The vast majority of its bomber force consisted of single engined planes, such as Stuka dive bombers. Stukas proved useful for taking out military targets, such as tanks and soldiers, but lacked the range and payload capacity necessary to be effective strategic bombers. Germany also had a smaller number of two engined medium bombers. These bombers had a longer range and greater payload capacity than Stukas. In a blitzkrieg, these medium bombers would wander behind enemy lines to take out key rail lines and bridges; thereby isolating a targeted pocket of enemy troops. However, not even two engined medium bombers had anywhere near the range or payload capacity of a four engined strategic bomber. Any kind of serious strategic bombing effort required that four engined bomber–exactly the kind of bomber Germany did not have; and which the British and Americans did have. This demonstrates that serious strategic bombing raids had been a major part of British and American prewar plans, and were not necessarily a major part of German prewar thinking. Part of the reason for this was that Germany lacked the industrial capacity for a long war; and so had to try to win quickly via blitzkrieg tactics.
After the fall of France, German bombers attacked military targets in Britain. In the process of this, a few bombers went off course, and some of their bombs fell on civilian areas. Hitler publicly stated this was accidental. Churchill claimed to disbelieve him, and sent multiple retaliatory strikes against German cities. (I have seen it alleged that Churchill knew the bombings were accidental, but chose to lie about them to the British people.) German morale was very low as a result of these strikes. To solve that problem, Hitler decided to engage in retaliatory strikes against British cities. That solved Germany’s morale problem. But it also solved several of Churchill’s problems. German attacks on British cities were far less effective, in military terms, than the attacks on British airfields, sector stations, docks, and other military targets had been. In addition, German attacks against British civilian targets ended all talk of a peace treaty with Germany.
In its entirety, the German bombing effort against Britain cost about 60,000 lives. In a single night of bombing, the Allies would sometimes kill 30,000 or more German civilians. The German strategic bombing of Britain had been more or less thrown together, with planes which had been designed and built with other uses in mind. The Allied bombing of Germany was the result of something premeditated before the war, and of years of industrial production dedicated to making that prewar vision a reality.
