An American Werewolf in Baghdad

[MMI]

I am assuming that quoting 1-3 paragraphs from various lengthy works (which I cite) constitutes fair use in the eyes of the SDMB. If not I apologize.

[Dissonance]

*Originally posted by T. Mehr *
After you guys have thoroughly put away with this stupid comparison of post-war Germany and Iraq, one big question remains:
How come nobody (in charge) ever thought about it that there might be differences? Did Rumsfeld really belive, that after Saddam is gone, everything would go as smoothly as after WWII?

I think he very well did think something along those lines. The force initially sent into Iraq was quite small - the backbone of it consisted of one Army mechanized division and one Marine division, along with roughly a division’s worth of British troops. While another Army mechanized division was supposed to take part in the invasion by moving south from Turkey, it spent the conventional phase of the war with it’s vehicles floating around the Mediterranean – a testament to how little Rumsfeld and others thought it would be needed; it could have been shifted to Kuwait in time for the invasion rather than waiting to see if Turkey would allow its transit. I quoted a Financial Times article (since expired unless you have membership) here once that was provided by the late lamented Collounsbury in which Wolfowitz came out and stated that planners had anticipated substantial elements of the Iraqi Army would remain intact to help provide post war security. The idea that the Iraqi military was going to rally to the US’s side and help maintain order after the war (in which, incidentally, we had been bombing these very folks) was dangerously ludicrous. Had the US gone in with a much larger force initially, while I doubt the aftermath would closely resemble Germany post WWII, it probably wouldn’t be as bad as it is today. At the very least, a lot of the looting could have been substantially reduced in scope.

From Dissonance’s first cite, now available as a site!
THE U.S. ARMY IN THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY
1944-1946

by
Earl F. Ziemke

Not wanting to take credit which isn’t really mine, Eolbo’s fourth link in the thread leads to chapter 18 of this title, I was just spelling out clearly that it’s official history and that a hard copy could easily be obtained at any library in the US.

[MMI]

My bad. Credit where credit is due.

[Mops]

Postwar Iraq Is No Germany, Historians Say - Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2003

… For the first month or two after the Nazis’ surrender, there were about the same number of sabotage and sniper attacks in Germany as in postwar Iraq. But in Germany, such attacks dropped off after June 1945, a month after the surrender, and for the rest of that year deaths of U.S. troops subsided to “tens,” historians said. …

One point to support this: Had the US occupying forces in Germany acted as an occupying army under continual threat of terrorist attack probably has no choice but acting (i.e. with an intimidating and alienating display of arms to people, humilating people caught up in road blocks and raids, and frequently killing innocent civilians by mistake) the collective memory of the occupation period would be much different.

[Frostillicus]

Those who want you to believe that postwar Iraq in 2003 isn’t as bad as postwar Germany in 1945 have now resorted to inventing fake “historial evidence” that demonstrates how Truman was being hounded after the war because of the high casualty rates in postwar Germany. See the following link on snopes for verification.

Administration Quagmire

PS Why is it that some people purposing lie in order to demonstrate that they are telling the truth?

[Eolbo]

Thanks for that link Frostillicus. Its disgusting the length that some people will go to.

As I said in my OP:

the people that began this comparison aren’t ignorant they are being consciously fraudulent.

[MEBuckner]

It took months for Union forces to mop up die-hards and for instance one confederate unit, the raider Shenandoah refused to surrender until November 1965…[T]he Shenandoah did remain at sea not knowing the war was over…

Of course if the Rebels had just given back that pirate gold they’d have been able to return home a lot sooner.

[Eolbo]

Hmm interesting Slate article today.

Condi’s Phony History

It points out that according to the Rand study that Dissonance earlier linked to: total post-war combat deaths in Germany after WW2 were precisely zero.

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1753/MR1753.ch9.pdf

Makes me wonder if even the Bremen deaths atrributed to werewolves were really due to them at all. The incident, an explosion, could be explained by other causes, and given Germany was littered with unexploded ordnance in 1945 it could have been an aerial bomb or wartime booby-trap being triggered.

I am inclined to still accept the Passau deaths as I have since found it mentioned in contemporary records. So we may be looking at a grand total of three American deaths, in one incident in 1946. The suspected arsonist, a man with a nazi past, committed suicide while awaiting trial, which while not conclusive is at least a compelling argument that these deaths should be counted.

Slate article also gives a longer extract of Rumsfeld’s recent remarks:

One group of those dead-enders was known as “werewolves.” They and other Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?

Very dishonest. This is wartime activity he is describing. The mayor of Aachen was killed in March 1945, two months before the war ended. This is how history is distorted, Orwell would be proud.