Razing With a Human Face

[dexters]

This isn't related to Civ 3 per se, but I thought it important to mention it.

Late last night, I was watching an old documentary (likely from the 1950s) concerning the people of a town in Checkoslovakia. The German SS was apparently hunting several assasins who had killed a Reich official. I'm not clear on this, but I believe they made a connection between the assasins and the town of Lidice. What did they do?

They killed all the men in the town, sent the women to concentration camps, and gassed the children. Then, they leveled the town.

Yes, they razed it to the ground.

While I'm a proponent of razing in Civ III (foreign nationals in your cities can be annoying) I thought it was appropriate to mention the historical context of such acts. and how cruel it is.

[smellymummy]

that's a good point, but in your example the act of razing was commited by mass murdering lunatics. The SS were not nice folk after all.

How about looking at it in this context:

Your amazingly advanced culturally supreme civ (culture 20k) takes over a few cities of a backward civ (culture 1k). You raze the city and promise the citizens a better life among your own people. Technically theres no place that says raze the city, and gas the people/burn the people. For all we know, we could raze the city while the inhabitants are cheering your military units

[dexters]

Oooops. I thought I was posting in the general forum. Mods, please move this thread to General forum

Thanks.

[Kc7mxo]

Um. yeah right. while you're burning down their homes you're magically moving them back to your empire. while noticing no population influx, no horde of unemployable primivitves suddenly showing up at the welfare line. . . . .

i think its more probably that you demolish their city and while most die in the resulting week of looting, pillaging, murder, rape, and other enjoyable activities, the few survivors simply scatter and starve.

And the ss weren't the first to do this you know. its about as old as warfare itself. Many ancient empires (mongols, romans) used it as a tactic. burn down one city and put every citizen to the sword, and the next one will probably be a bit more interested in surrendering.

.

[DK36]

I agree with kc there.

Besides, who the hell would listen to someone saying "I'll give you a better life, but first let me burn down everything I see that you once held close."

Razing the city is cruel. It's not the prettiest thing to do. And we all know all those citizens (in the form of workers) aren't volunteering to help you with public works. You basically come in, destroy, kill, rape, all that happy stuff, and then bring up a few thousand people back in the form of slaves\concentration camps\whichever way you want to view it. I guess it depends on the society though. The more ancient ones lean toward hording back slaves, while the latter is more like with the ss as described.

[inca911]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
And the ss weren't the first to do this you know. its about as old as warfare itself. Many ancient empires (mongols, romans) used it as a tactic. burn down one city and put every citizen to the sword, and the next one will probably be a bit more interested in surrendering.

.

And do not forget that many more modern empires have done it as well. A couple cities called Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind....

[MarshalN]

Yup, razed two cities and all of a sudden the Japanese were a lot more keen on surrendering.

Even though they probably were preparing for a surrender at that point already, like a lot of research said. Whether they were going to without the nukes, we'd never know. One thing is sure though.... it made things happen a lot faster.

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Um. yeah right. while you're burning down their homes you're magically moving them back to your empire. while noticing no population influx, no horde of unemployable primivitves suddenly showing up at the welfare line. . . . .

when you raze a large city you do get workers that you can transport back to your own cities. You can then have them join your city. Haven't you tried this? Some do complain too after being installed as citizens though (i.e.: stop fighting our mother country!), but it doesnt take usually have much of an effect since you the player have an amazing civ and everyone is happy.

As for the rest, like I wrote, it depends on what context you're looking at it. It's not like you can see what's going on in the little civ3 computer world with the little civ3 people and there civ3 city improvements now can you? If you want to pretend you're razing the cities, burning and gasing the people - okay.

[Blaupanzer]

The AI ruler of the civ whose city you razed will never be nicer than annoyed with you after you do it. At least that's been my experience. It's a nasty and wasteful thing to do. If you don't want the city, sell it. I strongly suspect that's the real reason that option (city-trading) is in the program at all. Move your units out first, then sell that turn, so it doesn't revert.

[zapperio]

Originally posted by smellymummy

As for the rest, like I wrote, it depends on what context you're looking at it. It's not like you can see what's going on in the little civ3 computer world with the little civ3 people and there civ3 city improvements now can you? If you want to pretend you're razing the cities, burning and gasing the people - okay.

Sounds like you're feeling a bit guilty. Having a hard time sleeping at night?.

Zap

[MarshalN]

You can't always sell a city back..... what if you need something from those tiles? Some resource/luxury? A chokepoint? A lot of times you have to keep a city or it's space, and the choice is raze or keep...... if you know keeping the city will make things tough for you razing might be a good idea.

[KaiserKiser]

Originally posted by inca911


And do not forget that many more modern empires have done it as well. A couple cities called Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind....

no offense inca, my motl friend, but i HATE when people condemn the idea of dropping the bombs on japan.. reasons:

1 - the japanese are extremely patriotic, willing to die for their country, hardcore folk... they fight to the death... this showed them that hey, maybe, for once, surrending is an option

2 - SO many more lives would have been lost continuing island hopping... think of how bad the small islands were, then think of invading the mainland...

also, in reference to the anti-nazi thing, yes, the nazis were probably the worst people ever to inhabit our planet, but my grandfather was an ss officer, so i do kind of take some offense.. he didn't go around raping jewish women... he was just ignorantly indoctrinated

[MarshalN]

I think what gets me more is that Japanese now portray themselves as the victims of the war by virtue of having had two bombs dropped on them.

Nevermind that they started the whole thing, invading half of asia, killing lots of innocent people (the massacre of Nanking being the most famous), and got themselves into this mess in the first place.

[inca911]

Originally posted by KaiserKiser
no offense inca, my motl friend, but i HATE when people condemn the idea of dropping the bombs on japan..

Hiya! Actually, I don't condemn the bombings at all. Although there may be some truth to the notion that the Japanese would have surrendered without the bombings, they had not yet done so at that point (oops). Certainly American lives were saved as a result of the bombings and the Commander in Chief has a duty to protect our people at all costs. There was also a large political motivation to use the bomb. Island-hopping in the Pacific was an insane activity. Sometimes Japanese who were going to surrender were shot by their own compatriots and every single atoll and scrap of land was highly contested. The only way the Marines could secure many of the islands was to eliminate every person on the island. I agree with you 100% that island hopping was one of the most unsettling aspects of the war and that most folks don't realize how insidious it was....

[IronSpam]

On the subject of city razing, I remember in Latin class a Roman history tidbit. After the Third Punic War, the Romans took Carthage, a Mediterranean city in the modern-day North African country of Tunis. They had fought two previous wars with the Carthaginians. During the second of those wars, Hannibal marched elephants through Spain across France and into Italy.

Needless to say, after three wars the Romans were not happy with the Carthaginians. The Roman general in charge of the African expedition, Scipio Africanus, had all the inhabitants of the conquered city enslaved. But before sending them off to their new life, he used them as forced labor to dismantle the city brick by brick, then had them plow the earth all around and sow the land with salt.

These are some cool quotes from historical websites I found:

“The Romans, deeply suspicious of a reviving Carthage, demanded that the Carthaginians abandon their city and move inland into North Africa. The Carthaginians, who were a commercial people that depended on sea trade, refused. The Roman Senate declared war, and Rome attacked the city itself. After a seige, the Romans stormed the town and the army went from house to house slaughtering the inhabitants in what is perhaps the greatest systematic execution of non-combatants before World War II. Carthaginians who weren't killed were sold into slavery. The harbor and the city was demolished, and all the surrounding countryside was sown with salt in order to render it uninhabitable.”

“For six days the Romans were forced to take one building after another. This sort of street fighting is virtually unheard of in antiquity; once the walls were breached resistance was pretty much hopeless and surrender followed. The continued Carthaginian resolve is a measure of their desperation...
...The survivors were sold into slavery. The town was stripped of its valuables and burned for ten days. The land was then cursed (the story that it was sown with salt is a later invention). Carthage ceased to exist.”

The Romans must have really wanted that city wiped off the map, because salt doesn’t wash out and renders the land completely infertile. To this day, I think there’s still a bald spot where the original city once stood on the Mediterranean. And this was during the Roman Republic. Just think of what the Empire would have done!

Later on the Romans actually revived the city. It was just too strategic a spot to pass up. Looks like gameplay sometimes imitates history.

[MarshalN]

Well, Carthaginians threatened Roman existence at one point, especially after Cannae it looked really possible that Hannibal will win. They were scared, and so didn't take any chances.

There are plenty of other examples of things like this happening..... just the way things work back then I guess

[monkspider]

I think the atomic bombs should constitute an attrocity, for all intentions and purposes, the Japs were beaten. After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, destroying the vast majority of the Japanese army. I agree with many modern historians that the atomic bombs were more a power-play to force Stalin to accept terms more friendly to the western powers. So to that degree, the Japanese were victims. Victims of the Western powers desiring hegemony in eastern-europe. Moreover, it is idiotic to simply place blame for Japan's starting the war making them the total bad guy. There is no bad guy in war, if the western powers hadn't been looting and raping China for centuries Japan wouldn't of been up against a wall where they were forced to either imperialize like the westerners or become a colony. I suggest everyone take a class on East Asian history some time to find out how bad the situation truly was for Japan at the turn of the century.

There are many things I can look upon the history of the United States with pride upon, but the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan is not one of them.

[KrazyHorse]

I almost never raze. I usually starve the city to size 2, arrest development, build settler to disband city and establish a new city in more ideal location. I'm a master at using available space to best effect (at least I think I am ).

[sophist]

In the later game, I try to bombard the city down to just a few pop. That does the same as starving them. Granted, that is only practical if it's the last city on your shopping list...

[MarshalN]

monkspider, I just happen to know a good bit about Japanese/Chinese history myself, and I have to disagree. Japan did not necessarily have to imperialize. The "threat" to them was more imagined than real, largely propagated by the military establishment at the time who wanted a war. They've always dreamed of conquering China, and that time, they did that.

I don't have so much problem with them starting the war than with them looting and pillaging and killing, committing just as many atrocities as anybody, and then come back and portray themselves as a victim. Keep in mind the bombing of Tokyo late in the war killed more people than the two atom bombs combined, but nobody's talking about that. It's just that the atomic bombs are that much more dramatic and that much more efficient that it's used to symbolize the destruction in war.

Nobody's contesting that Japan already lost the war by the time the bombs were dropped. I don't care if American lives are saved, but just standing from an American perspective, they face the certainty of losing more men in a war on Japanese soil, or they have two bombs that can end the war immediately. Granted, Japanese might have been preparing to surrender, but you don't know that for sure. How long would it take? 6 months? What are they going to do in 6 months, sit there and wait for the surrender? Why not end the war when you can? From a military standpoint with the American perspective in view, the use of the atomic bomb was perfectly justified.

From the Japanese perspective... they pretty much lost the war by the time Iwo Jima was invaded. Them holding out for so long with such tenacity gave all the more reason for the American administration to use an atomic bomb, because it showed how costly it could be to subdue the Japanese. It was so obviously a lost cause, but at the same time, they fight on anyway. If you know what actually happened in places like China, Malayasia, Phillipines, and such, where Japanese raped and killed and pillaged many, many innocent lives without real cause, you probably (hopefully) won't be saying what you did. Imperialism practiced by the Brits and the French does not consist in mass killing and mass raping to nearly the same degree, imperialism, Japanese style a la WWII, did consist of all those things.

Before you come out defending the Japanese, go back to the books and read up on both perspectives. Nobody seems to defend the Nazis, but a case for them can equally be made about them being "up against a wall where they were forced to either imperialize or become a colony". I wonder why nobody makes that? Because everyone knows what they did during WWII. What the Japanese did was much less reserached/publicized, and unfortuantely, forgotten by many.

[Frodo_05]

Hello,

first of all we KNOW by now that the Japanese tried to negotiate a peace since May 1945 through their Moscow embassy. But the Soviets foiled this attempt, because they were more interested in grabbing something for themselves. So - with the advantage of hindsight - we can today assume the following:

Using the A-BOMBS instead of negotiating with the Japanese lead to:

- the Soviets entering the war in the far East (which was DEMANDED by the USA in Jalta and Potsdam!)
- 100.000s of victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- possibly the communist victory in the Chinese civil war (the Soviet invasion of Manchuria benefitted them immensely) with everything that followed (Great Leap Forward, Culture Revolution)
- the creation of North Korea, the suffering of millions of people there. Not to forget the Korean War with all its victims and suffering.
- the occupation of several Japanese Islands by the Soviets to date

Well, I'm not saying that the people making this decision are responsible for the consequences, because you are always the wiser afterwards.

But maintaining even today that dropping the boms was the right choice is IMO a far shot from reality. Because:

- The REAL winners were the Soviets
- The REAL victims were the Koreans and possibly the Chinese
- The Japanese in general came out somewhat even. The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a sad story, but pale compared to what happened subsequently in Korea and China
- THE USA gained basically nothing compared to an approach of negotiating. They rather lost some international reputation. The Soviets had their A-BOMBS shortly thereafter and were not impressed.

[Bad Ax]

Since we're way off topic already...

Despite the success of Trinity, none of the upper military brass really expected the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to work. The suggestion, then, that this attack was intended to intimidate the Soviets isn't such a good one. It is, however, unlikely that the United States would have suffered quite as many casualties invading Japan as they expected. Japanese defenses were highly overstated, and casualty-estimation techniques of the time were crude. It must not be forgotten, though, that US overestimations of Japanese defensive capabilities were largely based on propaganda and demonstrations put on by the Japanese government. In short, they dug their own hole.

It is not unreasonable, however, to suggest that dropping the bomb saved Japanese lives. Certainly these actions ruined two reasonably important cities, but the other options were a US land invasion, which though not as bad as thought, would likely be incredibly destructive to Japanese forces and civilians. Even worse was the other option -- a total blockade of the country, coupled with conventional bombing raids to disable ports and disrupt interior shipping networks. The resulting famine would have killed Japanese civilians exclusively -- their version of a command economy placed virtually all resource control in the hands of the military, which would have first fed its own.

Good publicity after the war can work wonders, though. Virtually nobody today realizes that the Japanese did some absolutely pioneering work on biological warfare, using as test subjects Chinese civilians (whom they considered to be racially inferior). By the same token, nobody raves on and on about the firebombing of Dresden, arguably an atrocity on par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As for the Soviets benefitting from the bombing, I can only point out that the Soviet presence in Asia was indeed determined at Yalta and Potsdam, and that they likely would have invaded Manchuria themselves no matter what the outcome in Japan. A negotiated surrender would likely not change what happened in that respect.

As for razing in the game... I've gotten away with this before, and resumed fairly friendly relations with the former owner of the razed site. In one game as the Russians, I razed two English cities and one belonging to France. After a peace treaty and a reasonable period of time, both nations went back to being polite. It is worth noting, though, that I frequently had "gracious" relations with lil' Joanie, but it never improved back to that level after the razing (despite resonably frequent gifts and a MPP).

[MarshalN]

I think Bad Ax basically summed up what I'd like to say.

And on the point of American casualties. Like I said, American casualties or not, the bombs would've saved lives no matter what. The fire bombing on Tokyo in (if I remember correctly) June that year took about 200-300 thousand lives, much more than the two atom bombs combined. Nobody seems to remember that. Like I said, the atom bomb is just that much more efficient and dramatic, and it's the dramatic aspect I think that does the job.

And he's absolute right on the part about biological warfare. It's well documented (but little known) that the Japanese had a few labs in China that did some really nasty stuff that you probably don't want to see. Suffice to say, those people who were experimented upon definitely had worse suffering than anyone who died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Imgaine having your arms melted.....

Or, for that matter, the systematic raping of women who had their uterus removed. They were sex machines (literally) for the enjoyment of the soldiers. The Japanese army took the age old tradition of raping who you conquer to a whole new level.

The list is long, which is why I find baffling why anybody will think it was ok for the Japanese to fight the war. As I've said, the atom bomb was just more dramatic, but the human suffering, in the large scheme of things, is not necessarily higher.

Anyway, we're way off topic.

[teknokrat]

Well, I don't know what history books people here use but the situation at the end of the pacific war was analyzed by a historian (famous fellow but the name escapes me for now) in a article in Foreign Policy a few years ago using the Truman archives. These facts emerged;

1. The US knew that Japan was going to surrender (they had broken their code long ago)

2. The A-bombs were dropped to stop Stalin from trying to take some of japan (like germany) and in general to intimidate the russians.

3. The second bomb was a test which makes it an apalling atrocity in my book.

4. There was not going to be any invasion of Japan. The States knew it had one. By delaying this surrender until the bombs were ready American lives had actually been sacrificed by Truman.

Also, I am suprised no one has mentioned the raising of Vietnamese villages during the Vietnam War. Good military strategy never dies...

later

[red_fox]

I love history...
"Those who know history are doomed to watch others repeat it"
I just want to chuck a few thoughts/maybe facts. (history is writen by the winners.
Nazis didnt start concentration camps they just took it to a new level. (Was it the boar war in africa?) This is along the lines of the a-bomb as show thought.
All is fair in love and war.. holds true. they said you cant do this you cant do that... well too bad for you if i win. They told Germany no conventional warfare after WW1 so this led to advancemants in many other military aplications. can you say V1 and V2.
As for causes of war you can justify anything, I need that resource, I need more room, damn ideology i'll get you!they told me I could have it, I used to have it. You get the pic.
And for the record Germans in WW2 were the first to try strategic bombing. It was partially successfull but radar sites were hard to hit. It was the allies who started civilian bombing, hence the V in vengance weapon.
Apearantly germany was within reach of an ICBM capable of hitting New York this one was dubbed the V 30 I belive.
I think that there should be an option of raising your own cities as the russians did in WW2, scorched earth man. If i cant have it noone will. Whether or not you want to act like a russian is up to you.
Warriors are animals. Rape and pillage are payment for an unfathamable horror. WAR. In WW2 the german troops were highly trained. They would kill almost always, somthing like 70% of them were killers. America had like a 30% killer army. Thus Germans were basiclly crazier. America has now implemented viciousness in its training. A significant threat to a civ is its decommisioned wariors, a bunch of messed up socialy "off" killers, you cant just turn that off. Guess what the original hells angels were comprised of?
And as for the second bomb in Japan, one argument for the second one was, that the first could be denied or minimized. How many times have you played a new game and somthing radicle happens and you are like "what the hell was that" well doing it 2x makes it clear as to what is happening much faster"they will get the hint, I promise".
If'a, could'a, would'a.
thats why its history.

[MarshalN]

Actually, Germans started bombing civilians. They first bombed strategic locations/resources, to good success actually. The RAF had a hard time keeping up and were on the brink of collapse... then Hitler decided that it wasn't working and started bombing civilians. Yes, it was a retaliation for a bombing of a German city (I forgot which) by a small group of bombers. It was more of a display of defiance and desperation by the Brits though than an intentional killing of civilians since it was such a small group of bombers -- not much damage done.

The mass bombing started.... but Allies took it to a whole new level that I think is not justified. Dresden is just the most obvious exmaple, but many other cities were hit without good reason, and many people died for it. I'm SURE the firebombings of German cities, or Japanese cities, killed many more than the atomic bomb ever did. Which is again why I think the atom bombs weren't nearly as bad as people say they are.

Now, if you use hydrogen bomb now, it's a different story....