Suicide bombers as resistance tactic in WW2

[SergeantHeretic]

So who is talking about Freedom Fighters versus Terrorists, I am talking about suicide tactics specifically, they don't work, they NEVER work, it's why people that actually want to win don't use them.Now if all you want to do is just kill people in a showy spectacular display or fanatical impotence then Suicide attacks are the way to go, but if you want to win you'll need blooded experienced fighters that can and will survive from one mission to the next.I am sorry, but in terms of either conventional military or even partisan warfare, that's reality, sir.

 

[Snake Featherston]

They were. But still had to be liberated by the Red Army. Hizbolah won without having to wait for a Syrian Army to "liberate" Lebanon.

Actually Hezbollah really didn't win, nor was Hezbollah a Syrian proxy or even really a Lebanese movement. Like the PLO it was a foreign movement involved in destabilizing Lebanon for the benefit of an ulterior agenda. In the PLO's case Yasser Arafat and Palestine (in that order), in Hezbollah's case Ayatollah Khomeini.

The US treated the Iraquis as fairly as could be expected under the circumstances and still got suicide bombed. Some countries are nicer to invade then others, I guess. But a few hardliner French with a few tons of explosives could have turned that around in short notice.

So you call the USA presiding over a system that made the clumsy Stalinist knockoff that was the Saddam Hussein regime look efficient by comparison as fair as could be expected?

You know it's interesting.

When people we admire or sympathize with use these sorts of tactics they are 'freedom fighters' and their actions are 'heroic.' If some French or Polish women walked into a German facility in 1943 and blew themselves up they would be martyrs. Same if some Afghans sacrificed themselves against the Soviets in 1982.

When people we hate or oppose use these tactics they are 'terrorists' and their actions are 'fanatical.'

It's good to remember that one country's freedom fighters are another's terrorists. It really does matter which side of the line you're on.

Morally it doesn't really have any effect, the acts are evil all the same. At the more human level of revenge and emotion? It is the decisive factor of just who the target is.

 

[SergeantHeretic]

COncerning Successful guerilla warfare

Let's look over to the People's Republic of Vietnam and their effort to unite thei country.

They never used Suicide bombers.

They also won.

BECAUSE they never used suicide bombers.

Same story in Cuba.

VIctory against the Batista regime, no suicide bombers.

Same with Nicaragua, they defeated the Somoza regime, WITHOUT suicide bombers.

Over and over again you have these anti-American Anti-Western forces winning their wars because they fought it like a war, not a temper tantrum.

 

[AdA]

The thing about suicide bombers is that they don't work.

They NEVER work and history does not record even one case of a goal of a movement of "Suicide bombers" ever actually happening.

The thing is if you kill every member of your resistance effort on their first mission, you won't have a very good ressistance efort.

It may be showy and spashy in a morbid sort of way, but in tactical and strategic terms it just doesn't work.

YOu can't build up a force of blooded fighters that way.

And fighting the Axis/Nazis with S.B.?


Sargent, I hate suicide bombers for the same reason I hate antipersonnel land mines. I am a riflemen. But the fact is they work. They make it impossible for occupying forces to interact with the local population, and they radicalise conflict. They are a weapon that, like any other, as to be used as part of a global plan and not a universal solution.
We might despise them now, but there is a often told tale of a Spanish mother in the 1808/1814 war giving food and shelter to a group of French soldiers, eating the food with her children to show it was safe, only for the Frenchman on watch to find her, the kids, and all his camarades dead from poison. That tale is told with horror from the French side, pride from the Spanish side.
Suicide bombers are a devilish thing. But wasn't your General Sherman that said war is hell?

 

[SergeantHeretic]

The thing about suicide bombers is that they don't work.

They NEVER work and history does not record even one case of a goal of a movement of "Suicide bombers" ever actually happening.

The thing is if you kill every member of your resistance effort on their first mission, you won't have a very good ressistance efort.

It may be showy and spashy in a morbid sort of way, but in tactical and strategic terms it just doesn't work.

YOu can't build up a force of blooded fighters that way.

And fighting the Axis/Nazis with S.B.?


Sargent, I hate suicide bombers for the same reason I hate antipersonnel land mines. I am a riflemen. But the fact is they work. They make it impossible for occupying forces to interact with the local population, and they radicalise conflict. They are a weapon that, like any other, as to be used as part of a global plan and not a universal solution.
We might despise them now, but there is a often told tale of a Spanish mother in the 1808/1814 war giving food and shelter to a group of French soldiers, eating the food with her children to show it was safe, only for the Frenchman on watch to find her, the kids, and all his camarades dead from poison. That tale is told with horror from the French side, pride from the Spanish side.
Suicide bombers are a devilish thing. But wasn't your General Sherman that said war is hell?

You're conflating two different things, and yes, war is hell but how does that mitigate killing your own buys on their cherry-op in fundamentally useless displays of violence and importence.

People don't use Suicide bombers because they losing, they use them because they know they've LOST!

Name me just ONE country the defeated an occupying army my majority or exclusive use of suicide bombers.

 

[Julian]

From a military standpoint partisans were ineffective in WW2 unless supported by conventional military forces. For instance, Soviet partisans were most effective when they acted in concert with regular forces to damage German supply lines and distribute information. 5th Guard's Cavalry Corps, after it was encircled and nearly destroyed during Operation Mars, wrecked havoc behind German lines for weeks in cooperation with partisans.

 

[AdA]

Actually Hezbollah really didn't win, nor was Hezbollah a Syrian proxy or even really a Lebanese movement. Like the PLO it was a foreign movement involved in destabilizing Lebanon for the benefit of an ulterior agenda. In the PLO's case Yasser Arafat and Palestine (in that order), in Hezbollah's case Ayatollah Khomeini.

Tell that to the locals on Lebanese Shia neighbourhoods. Did they had Iranian help. Sure. Was that help greater than the help Tito got? No!

So you call the USA presiding over a system that made the clumsy Stalinist knockoff that was the Saddam Hussein regime look efficient by comparison as fair as could be expected?

given the circumstances, yes. They were not trying to colonise the country, not killing civilians deliberately nor which hunting in a large scale.

 

[zoomar]

I think it would tend discredit many resistance movements, no matter how many Germans it killed. Suicide in general, and suicide bombing in particular, does not conform with most western value systems. Deliberate suicide in warfare to take a few of your enemies with you is usually perceived as an act of courageous (or extreme) desperation by someone who has lost the fight and has no options left. It is not seen as a path to victory. It would also imply that the resistance movements themselves have switched from liberation to revenge - not necessarily something associated with the moral high ground.

 

[SergeantHeretic]

FOlks, I just want ONE case of a campaign of suicide bombing doing what the Suicide bombers claimed they were trying to do, that's all I want.

Never mind talk of "Global effects" or nebulous rhetroic about, "Future impressions, I am talking about a genuine positive Strategic or tactical victory as a direct result of suicide bombing.

 

[AdA]

You're conflating two different things, and yes, war is hell but how does that mitigate killing your own buys on their cherry-op in fundamentally useless displays of violence and importence.

People don't use Suicide bombers because they losing, they use them because they know they've LOST!

Name me just ONE country the defeated an occupying army my majority or exclusive use of suicide bombers.

Like I just said suicide bombers, like any weapon, are not a all encompassing solution. But they work as part of a plan. They worked in Lebanon. They worked as destabilisers in Iraq. They are working in Afeghanistam. And were the Vietnamese kids that walked up to American soldiers with grenades real or just old soldiers tales? They did have death volunteers.

 

[SergeantHeretic]

Like I just said suicide bombers, like any weapon, are not a all encompassing solution. But they work as part of a plan. They worked in Lebanon. They worked as destabilisers in Iraq. They are working in Afeghanistam. And were the Vietnamese kids that walked up to American soldiers with grenades real or just old soldiers tales? They did have death volunteers.

Strapping a bomb to a kid isn't a suicide bomber, it's child murder.

As is using any child that cannot possibly know any better to fight in a war.

 

[AdA]

Spain

In Spain, in the independence war, it was common for women and even children to approach a marching French unit and stab a Frenchman with a knife knowing they would be not just killed but tortured to death. That kind of determination, crazy as it might seem to those who have never been invaded, tends to give an invading Army a very stressful occupying experience.

 

[oshron]

just as a note, Turtledove wrote suicide bombers into Settling Accounts, starting with Mormon rebels during the Second Great War, but later other resistance fighters in other countries; in that TL, they were called "people bombs"

 

[SergeantHeretic]

In Spain, in the independence war, it was common for women and even children to approach a marching French unit and stab a Frenchman with a knife knowing they would be not just killed but tortured to death. That kind of determination, crazy as it might seem to those who have never been invaded, tends to give an invading Army a very stressful occupying experience.

And tell me, how was SPain eventually liberated?

I am willing to bet dollars to donuts it was a regular ressistance movement using organized guerilla tactics that did the job.

 

[SergeantHeretic]

just as a note, Turtledove wrote suicide bombers into Settling Accounts, starting with Mormon rebels during the Second Great War, but later other resistance fighters in other countries; in that TL, they were called "people bombs"

I know, I never liked those books. Turtledove is not the same writer that wrote "GOTS" or even the Worldwar seiries."

He changed and not for trhe better.

 

[AdA]

Morally you are right

Strapping a bomb to a kid isn't a suicide bomber, it's child murder.

As is using any child that cannot possibly know any better to fight in a war.

But can we get practical? The nazis were about to exterminate entire ethnic groups. Imagine yourself as a polish Jewish woman forced into a german brothel. Imagine someone slipped you a suicide vest and you knew you could get among your tormentors and pull it's trigger. Would you consider it?

 

[SergeantHeretic]

But can we get practical? The nazis were about to exterminate entire ethnic groups. Imagine yourself as a polish Jewish woman forced into a german brothel. Imagine someone slipped you a suicide vest and you knew you could get among your tormentors and pull it's trigger. Would you consider it?

I know the answer you have baited me into giving and sorry, but once more your are conflating two issues.

Do suicide bombers work to lead as the MAIN CAUSE of an enemy occupyers defeat?

No sir, they do not.

They cannot.

You kill yourself and a small number of occupyers, and this leads to reprisalls against your people far worse than any damage you may have done.

Suicide bombers don't defeat regular Army's only regular armies defeat regular armies.

 

[zoomar]

Like I just said suicide bombers, like any weapon, are not a all encompassing solution. But they work as part of a plan. They worked in Lebanon. They worked as destabilisers in Iraq. They are working in Afeghanistam. And were the Vietnamese kids that walked up to American soldiers with grenades real or just old soldiers tales? They did have death volunteers.

And none of these situations where you claim suicide bombing has been a military success are in western contexts. I'm not sure the image of a French resistance fighter walking into a crowded restaurant and blowing himself and 20 Germans (and French restaurant workers) up would have the same meaning to the people it was intended to give hope to that bombings in Iraq or Afghanistan may. It would be seen as suicide. Something losers do. France would have been better served if someone with such courage had the sense to stay alive and keep fighting.

 

[AdA]

And tell me, how was SPain eventually liberated?

I am willing to bet dollars to donuts it was a regular ressistance movement using organized guerilla tactics that did the job.

Actually it was wellington's Anglo Portuguese Army that did the job. The Spanish did kill a lot of Frenchmen though. I'll take your dollars and strongly recommend you read about the peninsular war. I was using Spain to press the moral issue, Lebanon the pratical one. I though I as being clear? And I refer you to my original post. I'm not defending suicide bombing, just trying to learn something about it by projecting it into a AH resistance movement in occupied Europe.

 

[SergeantHeretic]

Actually it was wellington's Anglo Portuguese Army that did the job. The Spanish did kill a lot of Frenchmen though. I'll take your dollars and strongly recommend you read about the peninsular war. I was using Spain to press the moral issue, Lebanon the pratical one. I though I as being clear? And I refer you to my original post. I'm not defending suicide bombing, just trying to learn something about it by projecting it into a AH resistance movement in occupied Europe.

Well, it's a REAL good way to repel and frighten the western allies you'll need to help you fight off the Nazis.

Sooooo,...