• A friend of mine mentioned that today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, which got me thinking.

   

  I've been listening to a great podcast called Dan Carlin - Hardcore History. You might find it captivating; I do. At the moment he's on World War I. He covers other fascinating and controversial topics like American Expansionism in the 1890s, the Reformation, Ethics of the Atomic Bomb, etc.

   

  Specifically regarding his episode on the Ethics of using the Atomic Bomb first, and how at that point, the firebombing that both sides (but mostly the Allies) had been perpetrating on civilians in large cities a) was actually just as bad or worse, carnage-wise, than the 1st atomic weapons– the A-Bomb just facilitated doing it faster; and b) reinforced the fact that the greater the distance from your intended target/victim, the more impersonal it becomes, the easier it is to pull the trigger/drop the bomb/incinerate noncombatant civilian women & children. Heavy stuff.
   
And on the Auschwitz front, thank God the Russians were victorious and all, but the crimes, rapes, murders, etc. that they committed essentially as revenge against the Nazis when the tide turned, are just as horrific. Madness was at its full tilt at that time.

By comparison, the Western Front was almost a "gentleman's war". I think the main reason we don't see more films or stories about the Eastern Front is that it's too freaking horrific.
 
This is a bit of a rambly blog post; sorry about that. Just some jumbled thoughts on this frozen night in New York, after the Blizzard That Wasn't (Here).