Here’s one description of the beginning of the end for Berlin in the final days of WWII:

“The final chapter in the destruction of Hitler’s Third Reich began on April 16, 1945 when Stalin unleashed the brutal power of 20 armies, 6,300 tanks and 8,500 aircraft with the objective of crushing German resistance and capturing Berlin.”

The Japanese had the good fortune of having a religion and an emperor one step removed from battle. It took _two_ atomic bombs on top of the decimation of the state to bring the emperor to surrender a martial ambition that could not be left to fester and redevelop.

Think about these immense wars of the previous century: Germany — untold dead, rails cut, ports bombed, army defeated in area after area after area — and right to the last, until out of bullets (except two for Adolph and Eva — the last decent thing he ever did was marry and right afterward attended the double-murder, one of them his own), the Nazis fought. For Japan, battered by allied bombing raids, also pushed back, Hiroshima, where the first bomb was dropped, didn’t produced surrender. It took Nagasaki, and no one doubts that “Curtis” would have continued until nothing was left.

There’s madness in the heads of “malignant narcissists”, and some really cannot believe they’re evil or that they are losing until they’re gone, and I’m not certain even then that they’re convinced.

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Related: http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

Hamas secures weapons in a variety of built noncombatant / non-military locations.  Israel delivers warning calls and warning shots, and then what it bombs it destroys in its entirety.

Have the “bug-out bag” read and (even if without) flee: when that army comes knockin’, get out of its way.

Not coincidentally, Pakistan’s Defense Forces have been active recently in North Waziristan”

(CNN) — Pakistani troops launched a ground offensive against militants in the capital of the country’s North Waziristan area Monday, starting a new phase of a 16-day fight that has seen more than 450,000 people flee the area.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/30/world/asia/pakistan-north-waziristan/ – (video) 7/1/2014.

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