Newsflash!
In periods of all-out war, atrocities happen.
We now return you to your regular programming.
And we rewarded those who committed the atrocities.
This wasn't a Lieutenant razing a village. This was the systematic mass murder, by the Soviet NKVD, of Polish officers, lawyers, doctors -- essentially the educated class of Poland who did not show signs of being convertible into supporting Communism.
What FDR was worried about was, if the full scope of Soviet atrocities were made known, the American public might decide that maybe we should support the Germans AGAINST the Russians.
How sad it must be to have to be you.
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance. 20,000 Polish officers and other members of the Polish intelligentsia were arrested AFTER Stalin's Red Army divided Poland with Hitler.
They were not the victim of an "atrocity during all-out war" as you say. They were arrested, taken in truckloads to a forest and murdered.
Twenty thousand or more of them.
Now, go back to your regular programming, which, judging by your stupid remark, is probably "The Price Is Right" or "Family Feud."
“In periods of all-out war”
It’s not as if Poland had been at the gates of Moscow. They barely put up a fight. There’s no reason for it to have been total war, except the Russians were driven mad by ideology and were bloodthirsty criminals.
“atrocities happen”
They do now, less so before wars got total, and especially less so since aerial bombardment. Part of me is with you because there’re always gonna be rogue commanders. But this was not Lt. Calley in the heat of command. It was coldblooded murder ordered from above. Also, it seems petty to gripe about thousands killed on the ground versus more than one hundred thousand from over Hiroshima.
Still, killing defenseless innocents is killing innocents. I for one don’t buy the magical distinction between shooting a man in front of you and causing one to burn to death without you directly knowing (so long as you know someone, or many, will die that way because of your actions). If I must go one way or the other I go with decrying both. Larynx was not war; it was murderer.