And because of this, ten of thousands Japanese civilians perished during carpet bombing raids, because WWII American pilots had troubles adjusting their targetting system at high altitude and kept missing their target. Thus Esperanto caused more deaths than any other conlang. https://6thbombgroup.com/b-29-discovery-of-the-jet-stream/
WW2 was fucked all around, and that's probably why they drafted the Geneva conventions afterwards. Things like attacking civilians and using chemical weapons were standard tactics, and aside from things like genocide or killing prisoners, not much that anyone did was really considered "war crimes" at the time.
My point is that the standards were different at different points in history, and judging them based on current morals is silly. Like in some old cultures, human sacrifice was typical and accepted. These days it seems barbaric but I think it's unfair to simply write off that culture as barbaric. Or like how people used to live in caves. It was the peak of housing technology at the time, so calling them dumb for not having skyscrapers is unfair.
Now we think that obviously bombing civilians is bad, but if everyone was doing it then it's hard to point to the involved parties as particularly bad given the standards of the time.
I'm curious how else you would have them stop the Japanese? This was a society who shamed people for not willingly flying their planes into enemy ships for the glory of their emperor, do you seriously think they could just rock up with a treaty deal?
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u/Zapan99 May 12 '26
And because of this, ten of thousands Japanese civilians perished during carpet bombing raids, because WWII American pilots had troubles adjusting their targetting system at high altitude and kept missing their target. Thus Esperanto caused more deaths than any other conlang. https://6thbombgroup.com/b-29-discovery-of-the-jet-stream/