“Additionally, German behavior as the occupiers of Belgium and France was pretty bad”
That the same Belgium that murdered about 8 to 10 million in the Congo a few years before? A lot of the Germans in Begium stuff was nothing but British propaganda. Some wasn’t,,but most was. But still,, for a Belgian, to ever complain about how they are treated by an occupying force staggers the mind.
Europeans sure are a hoot sometimes.
I am reminded of the scene in Band of Brothers when Easy, 506 PIR captured Eindhoven. There the women collaborators were lucky. The men were being shot. Dutch resistance wasted no time in doing their duty.
Then later, Easy is motoring by a barn when the door bursts open, three German Wermacht are shoved into the open and summarily executed by pistol by a French officer. Yea, Europeans have such a sparkling record in treatment of those they consider enemies, no matter their culture. In this, it all seems to be the same. Stones and glass houses.
French and Belgium troops under Napoleon did as much or worse in German principalities, duchies and kingdoms. British troops were restrained by penalty of death under Wellington during the Peninsular Campaign. Russians in the East were none too gentle in either WWI or WWII. Down the annals of history, I am sure the list goes on and on. It is my opinion it would have been worse for German civilians had the Germans not surrendered prior to a major occupation of German soil during WWI. Allied propaganda had vilified German troops and people to such an extent it could not have been otherwise.
Of the long list of things Wilson is guilty of, putting American soldiers on European soil to try to settle yet another of their deadly squabbles is the top of my list. That was a European war. If they wanted to murder one another it was their business, not ours.
By the way, American commanders proved just as vigorous as their French and British counterparts in throwing their troops into German killing fields. They just didn’t have enough time to lose two or three million. It wasn’t the commanders that were so different, it was, and still is, the ethics of the troops under them. Even under the exteme duress of the battlefield, Americans, steeped in their reliance on God and their tradition of the importance of the individual, restrained themselves unlike any European army in history could.
The NappyOne