Replies

"just like what was done in WWII, and it worked"

In addition, while I do not dispute your WWII story, I never heard about such a thing and I'll bet 99.99% of Americans never did either. WWII was not fought on TV.

Many people think that WWII ended in Europe with VE day and in Japan with VJ day but for about two years after VE day Americans, Brits, French, on western side, and Russia on the east side of the demarcation lost many soldiers rooting out Nazi resistance (just like what is going on in Iraq). Although I did not learn of this in school I did learn this over the years and in the past several years I viewed some footage of the action on the History Channel.

Americans did not "torture" suspected Nazi sympathizers, they shot them in the public square, in front of the town's people. This was after they shelled the village where suspects were discovered, and then they offered to bulldoze what remained. Through the Marshall plan, Germans were able to borrow to rebuild the destruction.

Russians supposedly lost between 100K and 200K men in the aftermath. I do not know what the western allies lost.