OK, this has got to stop. When American (or British) atrocities are condemned a common defense is what I shall dub the Hitler Defense. It takes one of the following variations: “It’s not like anything was done on the scale of Hitler [or Stalin, or Mao].”, “Hitler [or the Japanese] did it first.”, “Hitler [or the USSR] was doing it, so we had to in self-defense.” For example, from the recent article on the Tokyo firebombing: While critics in Japan and elsewhere decry such attacks as war crimes, others say the Tokyo assault took place against a backdrop of the … Continue reading The Hitler Defense