3 BRUTAL Allied Generals That Would Have Been Tried for WARCRIMES if on the Losing Side of WW2

Is history really written by the victors? Out of these 3 Generals, who do you think was the worst and why is it Lavrenty Beria?

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🎬Video Credits:
Narrator - Cam
Editors - Kshitiz, Shantanu koli
Writer - Ashley
Researcher - Daniel

#TheFront #History

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Chapters

0:00 Introduction
0:48 Arthur “Butch” Harris
3:46 Lavrentiy Beria
6:52 Curtis LeMay
10:54 Conclusion

[PLANTFD]

That picture of Svetlana with Beria is so unsettling. You can tell how uncomfortable she is around him, she knew the monster he truly was. At another instance Stalin actually phoned her and told her to leave immediately when he found out she was alone with Beria. Beria is often not talked about enough in the pantheon of evil but he has more than earned his place. What a sicko

[PSS]

Beria should have been discussed and denounced separately. He is a much much more evil creature whereas the other two are simply belligerent and cold-blooded soldiers, probably too obsessed with Giulio Duohet's The Command of the Air.

[kentmitchell]

LeMay's comment that if the Allies lost, he'd be tried as a war crimes is ironic. The Japanese treated ALL captured enemy military combatants as war criminals.

[davidanthony]

' War is cruelty and you cannot refine it ! ' William T. Sherman

[stuckerfam]

My great-uncle committed a war crime. My dad was a small child when his uncle returned from war a changed man. Uncle Billy left a jovial, talkative, and sweet young man. He returned a dark, twisted, lonely alcoholic who would drink himself into a stupor to reduce his night terrors. My dad doesn't remember the sweet beloved young man that he was named after. In a scant few semi-sober moments my great-uncle Billy recounted his story to whoever would listen on those rare moments.

He found himself alone and isolated from his company in southern Italy while the Allied invasion was succeeding rapidly. He came upon 21 Italian soldiers who had seen the writing on the wall and quickly surrendered to him. Being by himself, he did his best to disarm them and began to lead/direct them to where he thought his troops were. As night began to fall, he became desperate to figure out what to do with his POWs. Could he tie them up successfully? Could he trust them enough to sleep in their presence? Would one or more of them change their mind about surrender and ambush him? Had he given up too much information about his own presumed troop location to them? In his desperation, he made the decision that would define the rest of his too-short life. He gathered them together as close as he could and began to execute them with his machine gun. He was, unfortunately for everyone, successful. Uncle Billy was dead before he turned 30. The atrocity he had committed haunted the good church-going young man and changed him into a cold, distant man who spiraled into places too dark for the 20-something to handle.

It was said by a thousand families after WW2 to be sure, but my family always said of Uncle Billy, "The war changed him." In my perspective, on that dreadful day in Southern Italy, 22 young men died. One of them took his own life. His soul died first, then less than 10 years later, his body followed it to the grave.

Thinking about my great Uncle Billy, who died in 1950, gives me deep sadness, even though I wouldn't be born for more than 2 decades after that. War is hell. World War 2 was a particularly deep recess of hell. Let's not forget it.

[Foreign]

"War isn't black and white. It's ugly shades of gray..."

[indianajones]

Beria was definitely one of the worst people of the Soviet Union. Portrayed brilliantly in the movie Death of Stalin.

[kenstrumpf]

History isn’t always written by the winners. Our view of the Spanish Civil War is almost entirely from the Republican point of view. For decades almost everything Americans knew about the Eastern Front in WW 2 came from German sources. The very fact that we know it as the Eastern Front is proof of this.

[RJLbwb]

Worth noting the 20th Air force did try precision bombing in Japan and failed at it. So cruelty wasn't LaMay's first choice, but he didn't hesitate when it was the most efficient choice. Also, it wasn't like Hap Arnold didn't know what was going on with the Millhouse Missions.

[mikmik]

Winners write history, old saw. FIRE Bombing Civilian centers by Allied Forces, was ignored by Post-War trials. AND Allied Pilots went along with it; "Just following Orders".

[TheWarmachine]

"History is written by the victors. History is filled with liars. The only way to change the world is one good lie and a river of blood." - Captain Price

[peterlovett]

I very much doubt that the Axis powers would have held war crime trials but rather have shot their opponents out of hand. It is interesting that LeMay wanted written orders to drop the atomic weapons on Japan as he was concerned that it would attract the accusation of a war crime.

[montieluckett]

Harris was given a raw deal by his own people and peers, if not to his face, when he left the room I'm surprised he didn't suffer a more deeper depression. About his only supporter after the war was Churchill. Beria was..., well, Beria. Le May had the factor of being, unlike Harris, young enough to continue his career, and had the Soviet Union to deflect his possible shortcomings. Two men who were the product of their times and one truly despicable human being.

[charlessaint]

My Japanese grandmother served the Japanese Red Cross during the war. She started in Tokyo then went to Singapore in 1943. When Japanese surrendered she, and the rest of the staff, were interned as POWs in Malaya. She came home in 1946 to a utterly destroyed Japan. Her eldest brother was conscripted and sent to China, he survived and came home in 1946 as well. Another brother is missing on one of the islands. A large number of her uncles and cousins also served. An unknown number died. When it came to the war itself, with the fire bombings and atomic bombs, Grandma was surprisingly not upset. She just said, "It was war."

[johnathan_mcnutt]

“The enemy should be left with nothing but their eyes to weep with over the cost of war” - U.S. Gen. Sheridan to Otto von Bismarck in 1870.

[mrfomo]

You could easily add dozens, if not hundreds of names to that list. WWII wasn't exactly a war between the good guys and the bad guys, but rather the bad guys and the even worse guys.

[dogsplayingpoker]

If I remember correctly the American pacific bomber command actually dropped tens of millions of leaflets on Japanese cities that were scheduled to be firebombed several days in advance warning them to get out. This also put U.S. bomber forces at greater risk. Also I read that the reason LeMay chose fire bombing was that Japanese war industry was spread out throughout entire cities. Every home and shop, store, small business etc. had at least one room dedicated to war production unlike Germany which like the U.S. and Britain had the majority of it's war production concentrated in the industrial centers of their cities.

[MakerInMotion]

Saturation bombing is nasty but that's how you win.

[BatMan-oegh]

With regards to Bomber Harris, Dresden had around 130 factories producing Optical gun sights, binocular lens and quite a few other military items. It was also a major transport hub for German troops to be moved around the country. And they also deported over 150K Jews from Dresden to the death camps.
Remember, the Germans started it by bombing London and other cities in the UK causing mass civilian deaths, as well as Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. They were also launching V1's at England from June 1944, and the V2's kept being launched until May 1945.
In Japan, a lot of industry was located in the cities, so they automatically became targets.
Yes, we can all lament the lives lost, but the Germans and the Japanese were going to fight till the death. Invading Japan would have cost a lot more Japanese lives than the bombings did. Beria was a different story that really does not come into the Military side as he was not in the Military.

[marks]

My dad was an Air Policeman worked with General Lemay during the 1950's (and later I was a SAC B-52 avionics technician in the 70's/80's). Lemay was a serious man, focused on preventing another war, he led Strategic Air Command (SAC) from an underfunded and undermanned group of a few leftover WWII bombers in 1948 to the most powerful nuclear force on earth by the late 50's. Much of the credit for preventing a WWIII during the massive Soviet buildup during the 50's and 60's goes to Lemay. The Soviet always believed that they would continue the spread of Soviet Communism thru force once their forces were rebuilt after WWII. The stalemate caused by the threat of SAC stalled their movement, though it continued through conventional proxy wars, until the USSR collapsed in 1991. He was a hard man, and many say callous, but a soft touch doesn't win wars. Those who served in SAC respected him, but always feared the white topped aircraft out of Offutt Air Force Base (SAC HQ). It meant that Lemay's Inspection Teams had arrived to see if your Air Wing met the standards he established for SAC. We had a saying in SAC. "To Err is human, to Forgive is not SAC policy.". SAC personnel worked hard, but Lemay made sure they had decent housing, good base facilities, cared for their families, and recognition for a good well done.