Sir, - As the West settles into a routine of bombing defiant, non-Western nations, historical precedents are cited in justification. But this has value only if the precedents are relevant. Mindless, all-purpose repetition of "Hitler and the Nazis" is not.
The scenes we have seen of Kosovans being ejected from their homeland and made into masses of displaced persons are not a repetition of Nazi practice. The most recent, relevant precedents in Europe were the Russian ejection of millions of Germans from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, and the later Czech removal of millions of Germans from Bohemia. Moreover, the Serb use of mass rape as a weapon of war derives not from the Nazis, but from the practice of the advancing Soviet army.
In other words, it is from the Allied side in the second World War, not the Axis side, that the Serbs have learned their cruel methods. - Yours, etc.,
Desmond Fennell, Anguillara, Rome.