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meat sweats posted:...or just start bleeding from your crotch every time someone suggests that Nazis are bad? Are you saying that all women on their periods are Nazi apologists? drat man, that's pretty low, even for you.
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May 8, 2014 17:14
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:There's no definitive answer to the question of consequences for refusing to participate in war crimes. Listen, I don't doubt for a second you're proficient in a wide range of topics surrounding the 3rd Reich, the holocaust, Hitler, the nazi state and the american response to the holocaust, but if you include "battlefield conditions" in that range while simultaneously insinuating that, in this day and age, we might not know how refusing orders - even unlawful ones - might have turned out for the average grunt, especially between 1939 and 1945, then I need to ask you to look into the Kriegssonderstrafrechtsverordnung and how it amended the Militärstrafgesetz of 1926 as well as affected the general atmosphere in all military branches with regard to disciplinary justice/due process. If you're saying that, in your studies, you've experienced a lack of actual cases of soldiers refusing to partake in warcrimes and the ensuing disciplinary proceedings, then that's an honest statement I don't have a problem with. But there is a very definitive answer to the question of what consequences a soldier could generally expect for acts of disobedience, insubordination, desertion in the face of undesirable duties, undermining military morale or conspiracy to do any of the aforementioned. To specifically address your example of the police battalions you mention: (as a preamble: I haven't read Ordinary Men, but I do know about the police battalions from "'Vom Fußfolk der Endlösung' - Ordnungspolizei, Ostkrieg und Judenmord" by Mallmann) You're absolutely correct in saying that in the case of Unit 101, there was a choice given, but you also might want to include details like who comprised Unit 101, when they were given a choice to refuse to partake, how often they were given that choice and, if transferred, where they were transferred to. Ironically, Browning apparently doesn't portray Unit 101 in the light I expected him to. Hell, just from glancing over his entry in Wikipedia, he seems to be arguing along the lines of behaviour observable in the Milgram Experiment, even though it's not entirely applicable to behaviour displayed in the atrocities committed in the holocaust. The bottom-line is that Unit 101 as an example simply isn't representative of regular military units and thus equally unapplicable to the general topic touched in the last couple of pages. On a related note, I just grabbed a used copy of Ordinary Men for 3 bucks off of Amazon, so cheers for suggesting what sounds like an interesting read.
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May 8, 2014 17:28
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I don't think you read my post, because it's in agreement with what you're saying. I wasn't saying "there is no definitive answer to the consequences for soldiers refusing orders in battlefield conditions," I said in committing war crimes - which were more often than not (or almost exclusively) committed outside of battlefield conditions. It depended on your unit, the battlefield, the area of operations, the year (German military justice became much harsher later in the war), your commanding officer, what branch you belong to, what you orders were, who you were, etc. Because of these variances, there's no easy answer to "well why didn't soldiers just refuse to do it!" Some did and were fine, I'm sure some did and were shot, and some probably were too afraid to refuse. What we do know, though, is that there are cases where soldiers who refused to shoot, say, Polish Jewish civilians, were simply excused from the duty with no punishment.
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May 8, 2014 18:30
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I think it's fair to say that there is zero evidence for recorded instances of men getting killed for refusing to participate in atrocities, but tons of evidence for people either getting reassigned or just actively not participating - going off to smoke behind the trucks while the shooing is happening or whatever. Now, this itself isn't definitive proof one way or the other. I don't have the figures at my fingertips but the Wehrmacht executed a ton of its own people - on the order of tens of thousands - for desertion, cowardice in the face of the enemy, theft, etc. - during WW2. Far more than any other country in the ETO. Could a few of them have been "cowards" who refused to participate in killing actions? Maybe. Additionally we have the the eastern front was loving huge and involved millions of people killing millions more. I wouldn't at all be surprised if somewhere, out there, in the vastness of the Eastern Front 1941-1945 some stressed as gently caress NCO got fed up with Gefrieter PantsWetter not having the stomach for clearing ghettos the 5th week in a row and put a bullet into him. Instances like that could probably get filed under "oh look, a partisan got Hans, how awful" pretty easily as well. Still, the best scholarship that has been done so far can't find any evidence of it in the records. Now pause for a moment and think about what that means. Unlike just about every other government in the 20th century, we have (relatively) full access to the surviving archival records and, despite the chaos and destruction of the latter part of the war, a gently caress ton of those records did survive. Unlike just about every other country you care to name there is no single caretaker government for the Nazi archives; they're scattered between holdings in the US, Germany, Britain, Russia, and I'm sure a few more. The archives are also, again for the most part, wide open. I'm sure there are a few really juicy files here and there that someone decided to bury in the most special Top Secret folio in Moscow or DC, but for the most part the highest level correspondence and dirtiest, darkest secrets of Hitler's Regime are splayed out for all to see. We also have a six decades of prosecution of members of that military for war crimes by a huge number of judiciaries. Off the top of my head the American, W. and E. German, Soviet, Israeli and Soviet governments all, at various times between 1960 and now, had special taskforces directed at rooting out war criminals and bringing them to justice. I'm sure there were more. Why is this important? Two reasons: 1) it has kept scholars, researchers, and jurists active in those very open archives looking for - and finding - assholes who have hitherto slipped through the cracks. 2) the trials have led directly to the re-interviewing of tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of people regarding what, exactly, went on in Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1945. Not all of these are of equal value, of course. A lot of the Soviet and E. German interviews are rather tainted by some questionable interrogation tactics. But even so, it's another giant mountain of evidence. A lot of the more resent research that's been done in the last couple of years has focused on these trials and trying to see what new information we can glean from the interviews that resulted from them. Within all of that evidence we have plenty of examples of people trying to shirk "unpleasant" duties and plenty of examples of officers offering men ways out. We have tons of examples of people participating out of what might be considered a sense of duty or a feeling that they were doing something extremely unpleasant specifically because they had been ordered to. We even have examples of people really getting into it and letting their inner sadist out. What we don't have is a wide spread pattern of reprisal executions for failure to engage in atrocities. Again, and I know I'm repeating myself here, this isn't proof that it never occurred anywhere, but it is a really strong sign that it probably wasn't prominent enough to be part of the recognizable pattern that comprises the day to day experience of the Holocaust for the perpetrators.
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May 8, 2014 19:32
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Seek help for yourself meat sweats.
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May 8, 2014 19:44
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What did Nazi Germany usually do to conscientious objectors who refused mandatory conscription? How many were executed?
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May 8, 2014 19:46
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Did Hitler ever work a normal wage paying job during his 'starving artist/tramp' years?
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May 8, 2014 22:28
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BeigeJacket posted:Did Hitler ever work a normal wage paying job during his 'starving artist/tramp' years? After WW1, he kept on working for the army and after he was booted out, he started working full-time for the NSDAP. Iunno if he ever had a job painting houses or delivering newspapers though.
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May 8, 2014 23:04
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I seem to recall from Bullock that before WW1 that he mostly lived off his father's pension and sold postcards to tourists. Additionally he would board in homeless shelters from time to time.
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May 8, 2014 23:07
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He also begged money off a wealthy aunt and friends IIRC. He was basically a bum.
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May 8, 2014 23:50
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:He also begged money off a wealthy aunt and friends IIRC. He was basically a bum. Yes, I've heard that he got money from wealthy relatives as well. I'd call him a bum if I hadn't have done the same thing myself.
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May 9, 2014 02:50
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:He also begged money off a wealthy aunt and friends IIRC. He was basically a bum. Sounds pretty smart to me actually. Hitler hating is so easy.
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May 9, 2014 03:02
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I seem to recall from Bullock that before WW1 that he mostly lived off his father's pension and sold postcards to tourists. Additionally he would board in homeless shelters from time to time. He received a partial pension from his father's death, which he used to pay living in a small appartment with a friend in Vienna. I can't recall the details, but he had to ask his mom and his mentally handicapped aunt for money, since the pension only covered parts of his costs. When he turned 21, he was asked to give up his part of the pension in favour of his mentally handicapped (half?)sister, since he was now old enough to start working. He refused. I'm not sure if they sued him or something, but he cut contact with his relatives. The only person that he really cared for was his mom, she died in 1907. He was a bum in the street for a few months in 1909 and later lived in the homeless shelter in the Meldemannstrasse for 3 years. Some guy there noticed that Hitler was good at painting and the two teamed up. He painted postcards and then later bigger pictures of famous buildings that the other guy would sell to a jewish framemaker who needed them for his showcase. Apparently it wasn't bad money, but Hitler only painted when he felt like it. Drama because of money, etc., etc. I don't exactly recall why Hitler goes to Munich in 1913 (apart from finally receiving money from his father's inheritance), but I think he wanted to avoid to get drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. As far as verifiable, Hitler never worked a regular job, or really any manual labor. Bum life.
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May 9, 2014 07:56
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He would have been the star of E/N.
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May 9, 2014 12:23
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JaucheCharly posted:
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May 9, 2014 13:37
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:Um he volunteered to be a Bavarian soldier in WW1 and was wounded in battle and was promoted to the rank of Corporal, that's not a regular job requiring manual labor enough for you? Promoted "up to" corporal isn't exactly a distinction for someone with four years wartime service. His ww1 service wasn't a joke by any means, but it also wasn't exemplary. Read Kershaw on him if you want details he does a good job with that.
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May 9, 2014 15:49
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What goes oft unmentioned when discussing Hitler's few accomplishments is the fact that he was a first-rate lover.
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May 9, 2014 16:14
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Cyrano4747 posted:Promoted "up to" corporal isn't exactly a distinction for someone with four years wartime service. His ww1 service wasn't a joke by any means, but it also wasn't exemplary. Read Kershaw on him if you want details he does a good job with that. He actually declined a higher promotion to stay with his messenging unit. He was what the US military would consider a Lance Corporal or Specialist, and was considered for a promotion to Corporal. So yes, not exemplary but certainly respectable. I just think Hitler hate is so easy, and is a reflection more of being seduced by post-war and wartime propaganda than it is the attempt at objective facts. I think the only thing Hitler really cared about was resurgent German nationalism. And yes, he was Austrian, but he did think that Austria should be part of Germany (and as Fuhrer, annexed it..). So whether he was a success in other activities is largely irrelevant to understanding his character, even if interesting. And he was 25 when he joined the Army, it's not like he was a 40 year old drifter. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 9, 2014 16:19
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I agree, Hitler gets a bad rap and was nothing but a simple nationalist who just coincidentally was the head of a state that murdered tens of millions of people. Anybody trying to analyze his character and life is probably just a brainwashed idiot who bought wholesale into postwar propaganda.
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May 9, 2014 17:05
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Pornographic Memory posted:I agree, Hitler gets a bad rap and was nothing but a simple nationalist who just coincidentally was the head of a state that murdered tens of millions of people. Anybody trying to analyze his character and life is probably just a brainwashed idiot who bought wholesale into postwar propaganda.
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May 9, 2014 17:12
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Skeleton Jelly posted:The point is that character assassination and over analysis of all aspects and periods in his life is utterly pointless, his actual crimes are enough to condemn him and his poo poo forever. Attempts to poo poo on all aspects of Hitler's personal life are just attempts to kind of detach Hitler from the average Joe, something that's done to Nazis all the time and is actually super dangerous in a way. It may be true that it doesn't do anyone any favors to try and mythologize the man into some kind of lovecraftian entity personifying all hate and malice in the universe, but it is equally silly to act like he wasn't a total shithead just as a person. Go read Mein Kampf. He's pretty open about having a deep seated antipathy for the Jews and goes on and on about how much he hates them. Same deal if you read Hitler's Table Talk or any of the other sources we have from people who had to deal with him routinely. You can't just whitewash him as a "simple nationalist" or anything like that. That has been the tack taken by Hitler apologists for decades, from the very first ones who argued that he was a good man with lovely advisers. Trying to paint him as a "simple nationalist" reduces him to the level of a Ho Chi Minh or even a Cecil Rhodes, which he's not. He's a totalitarian dictator who oversaw one of the most successful genocides of the modern era. That's a really loving small club right there. Nationalists? They're a dime a dozen. You can argue intentionalism vs. functionalism until you are blue in the face, but at the end of the day you probably don't end up with a continent-wide genocide without SOMEONE up top having a major hate-on for the people who are getting wiped out. Malevolent hand on the steering wheel or simply a loud mouth for people to aspire towards pleasing, either way it sets the tone for what follows. edit: before someone breaks out "Teddy Roosevelt was a racist too" and ethical relativism based on historical context, Hitler stood out as an anti-semite even in fin de siecle Vienna. When you stand out for that in Karl Lueger's city you're going a bit above and beyond. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 17:34 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 17:28
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Skeleton Jelly posted:The point is that character assassination and over analysis of all aspects and periods in his life is utterly pointless, his actual crimes are enough to condemn him and his poo poo forever. Attempts to poo poo on all aspects of Hitler's personal life are just attempts to kind of detach Hitler from the average Joe, something that's done to Nazis all the time and is actually super dangerous in a way. Yes, that, and it's also the way in which historians and others ignore the real ways in which Hitler had power and sway over the populace, which is what led to so many horrible situations. To say he was just a bum and a no good one at that is to deny exactly how it is he later achieved much of what he wanted to do. And that's the scariest thing of all to people, I think, that that conviction can exist in the world and can lead to so many people willing to give their lives for a cause. That's what so much propaganda has tried to undercut. He gave the people something to fight for, and he led them all the way to his death, many of their deaths, and the death of the regime. He united the people in a way that is rarely seen. I think everyone sees that but doesn't want to admit it because it says something too stark about human nature. With the right circumstances, it could probably happen anywhere, and it often does, on small scales. People banding irrationally against a common enemy. People will do a lot for meaning in their life, however it looks. Especially meaning that transcends the individual. ThePriceJustWentUp fucked around with this message at 17:31 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 17:29
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:Yes, that, and it's also the way in which historians and others ignore the real ways in which Hitler had power and sway over the populace, which is what led to so many horrible situations. Who? Who is doing this? Point me to works by respectable historians who are ignoring the ways that Hitler gained and maintained power in favor of falling back on a cartoonishly evil strawman based on wartime propaganda or needlessly slanderous depictions by victorious enemies. There is a gigantic body of literature on Nazi politics dating from the late 40s on to today that has been dedicated to dissecting how power worked in that state and what role Hitler played in it.
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May 9, 2014 17:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:Who? Who is doing this? Point me to works by respectable historians who are ignoring the ways that Hitler gained and maintained power in favor of falling back on a cartoonishly evil strawman based on wartime propaganda or needlessly slanderous depictions by victorious enemies. Yes but it's always been very dry and clinical and largely ignores Hitler's personal magnetism except to demonize it. I haven't read everything but I did read that Kershaw biography for example. Germany was swept up by the power of Hitler's conviction, and that's also why they fought until the bitter end. And my other opinion is that Hitler brought nationalism to its logical conclusion. Every nation with an army has enemies and latent tensions, only in Germany were those all brought out to the surface, sometimes honestly and sometimes deceitfully, by the state. It exposed the brutality of the very existence of the nation-state and in a way we've been trying to cover it up again ever since. Now leaders talk about world peace and disarmament and worldwide alliances but they all know those go against the very heart of the modern state and will never actually happen. What I am saying is that Hitler was more honest in his brutality. Like the scarface quote "I tell the truth even when I lie."
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May 9, 2014 17:52
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Cyrano4747 posted:Go read Mein Kampf. This is hard, as he is a fantastically lovely writer.
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May 9, 2014 18:17
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Ensign Expendable posted:This is hard, as he is a fantastically lovely writer. No, you see, he was actually a brilliant prose stylist and by not agreeing you are buying into the sheeple propaganda myth that Nazis are bad. I am amused that it took not even a page from people getting offended over not getting away with clean-Wermarchtism to openly gushing about what an awesome person Hitler is. Does anyone think there are 0 actual Neo-Nazis in this thread at this point?
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May 9, 2014 18:35
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meat sweats posted:No, you see, he was actually a brilliant prose stylist and by not agreeing you are buying into the sheeple propaganda myth that Nazis are bad. Dude, shut up, no one is doing that, go away.
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May 9, 2014 19:02
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Seven Hundred Bee, I would like to ask you a question about Nazi Germany. I hope that is OK with the people who think a historian's "Ask me/us About Nazi Germany" thread is actually the "explain why you would like to have a beer with Hitler" thread. When working in the historical field, how often do you encounter Neo-Nazis competing for space in academic or popular platforms? What criteria do you use to separate dangerous ideologues from people who have just been misled with half-truths, and would you consider military fetishists do be part of the latter group or a third category entirely?
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May 9, 2014 19:40
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meat sweats posted:No, you see, he was actually a brilliant prose stylist and by not agreeing you are buying into the sheeple propaganda myth that Nazis are bad. Me? I hate Hitler. Can't stand the guy. Ruined a perfectly good mustache style.
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May 9, 2014 19:49
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Maybe forums user meat sweats is in a 4th category altogether, a category maybe all his own, although probably populated with other useful idiots Edit - I should say something else about this. I just don't think holding the opinion that all of Germany is to be blamed for the war is a particularly good one. Where do you go with that? Even if you're just saying the entire Wehrmacht is culpable, that's still a huge leap and ignores realities such as chains of command, lack of knowledge about what a specific military operation is really for, being told misinformation in order to keep morale up and possible mutiny down, and things like this. You can't hold everyone equally responsible in such a complex situation. Where do you go with that line of thinking anyway? Unless you're the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and want to exact revenge on every man woman and child who wronged you, I don't see why it matters that Some Guy in the middle of wherever thinks that all Germans are terrible. What do you want people to understand exactly? It just seems to me like an emotionally based worldview largely influenced by propaganda and sensational renderings of wartime events. Like you're just emoting into the wind because of how you've been conditioned rather than actually making any kind of point. And then you call others Neo-Nazis for daring to question the mythology and trying to bring something new into the discussion. At least my point of view has something to bite into, even if you don't agree with it. It opens up new areas, it doesn't close them off. It's like you're a caricature of an actual thinking person, basically. ThePriceJustWentUp fucked around with this message at 20:26 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 19:55
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meat sweats posted:Seven Hundred Bee, I would like to ask you a question about Nazi Germany. I hope that is OK with the people who think a historian's "Ask me/us About Nazi Germany" thread is actually the "explain why you would like to have a beer with Hitler" thread. In an academic space, never. Neo-Nazis don't tend to get Ph.Ds. You do occasionally (and very rarely) see an academic who is associated with Neo-Nazis and is a Holocaust denier. In the popular space, sometimes. I had a professor who published a book about anti-Semitism in the American military, and he's showed me some letters he's recieved from Neo-Nazis and the Stormfront crowd, accusing him of being a Jewish apologist, being misled by the Jewish media, etc. Someone published a review of his book, responding to sections in which he listed some of the anti-Semitic beliefs held by US military intelligence, with the claim that "the author got all the truths right but just failed to believe them, instead falsely describing them as incorrect." Military fetishists are a different animal entirely. There's nothing wrong with having an interest in the minutiae of military life, it just can be get annoying when people conflate facts with historical research.
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May 9, 2014 20:19
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Ensign Expendable posted:This is hard, as he is a fantastically lovely writer. Yes, yes he is. If he could just stay on subject for more than a paragraph he'd be bearable, but he just meanders all over the drat place. It's like listening to an old uncle ramble about politics... His speeches are much more readable, as vile as his ethos can be. That said, I highly recommend the film Downfall, if anyone here hasn't seen it, which was partially based on the memoirs of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge. Hitler was just a guy. A human being, flesh and blood. Not a god, not a monster, just an ambitious guy in the right place at the right time saying the right things to the right people. Consider this: Jean-Louis Dessalles, in his book Why We Talk: The Evolutionary Origins of Language, writes: quote:"The second reason for not extrapolating a cultural origin for language from the genealogy of languages lies in the mechanism of linguistic propagation. If a language dies out through lack of speakers, the genealogical branch (a fictitious one, of course) containing all the languages it could have given rise to ‘disappears’ with it. The place of this branch is taken by other branches. If one starts from a pool of 100 languages, the genealogical trees which ramify from them are in fact in competition with each other. Even with a constant stock of 100 languages, it is extremely unlikely that all of the original hundred will continue for all time to have descendants. Given a long enough time, the random outcomes of successful filiations will mean that all languages eventually have the same ancestor. If we invert the reasoning, the fact that it might be possible to rediscover a mother language, in the sense of an ancestor of all the languages spoken nowadays, would not prove that such a language was the only one spoken in its day. In other words, the hypothesis of the mother language is perfectly compatible with the fact that there may always have been a considerable number of different languages spoken simultaneously on the Earth. If this is so, the argument for a mother language loses all validity and cannot lead to any conclusion about the cultural invention of language." So it is with Hitler. He was not destined, nor was he the product of utterly unique circumstances, because as others have mentioned, similar demagogs appeared in France and America and Italy and Spain and the UK and most of the other powerful countries around the same time. We are only talking about Hitler because he was successful on an unimaginably grand scale. That we know who the Nazis are, and the Neo-Nazis who exist today, are the result of him. We know the names of many others who were not as successful, and we do not know the names of those who failed miserably and whose movements died in the cradle. Of the millions of things that could have gone wrong for him, they did not long enough for him to start a war and kill or enslave millions and millions. Some of this was due to his skill as a leader, a speaker, and a politician, some of it was due having the right people working for him, and some of it was just plain old luck or coincidence. He didn't have to be a demon to do that. He loved Eva Braun and his dogs very much. He was very polite to women and children, and was a vegetarian. He enjoyed reading military histories, watching Disney and Charlie Chaplin films, and sketching out little drawings of the Seven Dwarves. But none of these humanizing traits excuse his actions and their consequences.
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May 9, 2014 20:39
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Well said.
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May 9, 2014 20:49
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One thing that stuck out to me though, from reading Mein Kampf, was that he actually had ideas, and wasn't just this hateful chimplike demon that I was always basically told he was (although hate is certainly a factor in his thinking..). His critique of the parliamentary system and his insights into mass psychology stuck out to me particularly. Now people say he cribbed all of that from other authors, but isn't that what everybody does in the end? But yea, reading that put him in a whole new perspective for me, where I saw that he was trying to actualize a conceived inner world rather than just flailing at perceived shadows and enemies.
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May 9, 2014 20:55
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:Yes but it's always been very dry and clinical and largely ignores Hitler's personal magnetism except to demonize it. I haven't read everything but I did read that Kershaw biography for example. Germany was swept up by the power of Hitler's conviction, and that's also why they fought until the bitter end. Hitler found out late what he was really good at. It was never his first choice of occupation. Where would he have been without WW1? The great depression and Versailles got him into power, not his personal magnetism or charisma in absence of complete economic and political crisis. When the economy got better, the nazis continually lost voters, that special ideological strain of nationalism never had appeal to the majority. Hitler hit it big, because he was able to strike a deal with the old elites, who thought they could outmaneuver him. Germany didn't fight to the bitter end because Hitler was so fantastically convincing, but because his actions and decisions in the east put everyone in a position that made them think that the war had to be won or else face what was thought to be the same stuff that they planned for the SU. Naturally it makes sense if you just think within the framework of that worldview, but that doesn't mean that everybody will act/think so radical. He just burned all the bridges. ThePriceJustWentUp posted:And my other opinion is that Hitler brought nationalism to its logical conclusion. Every nation with an army has enemies and latent tensions, only in Germany were those all brought out to the surface, sometimes honestly and sometimes deceitfully, by the state. It exposed the brutality of the very existence of the nation-state and in a way we've been trying to cover it up again ever since. Now leaders talk about world peace and disarmament and worldwide alliances but they all know those go against the very heart of the modern state and will never actually happen. What I am saying is that Hitler was more honest in his brutality. Like the scarface quote "I tell the truth even when I lie." You're assuming an awful lot of general things. Nations work on the basis of exclusion (and inclusion), but genocide isn't the logical consequence. It's like saying "driving cars gets people killed, therefore the nature of driving is to kill people". Power politics or whatever you want to call the constant conflict about ressources was played long before somebody thought about nations or race.
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May 9, 2014 21:25
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JaucheCharly posted:You're assuming an awful lot of general things. Nations work on the basis of exclusion (and inclusion), but genocide isn't the logical consequence. It's like saying "driving cars gets people killed, therefore the nature of driving is to kill people". Power politics or whatever you want to call the constant conflict about ressources was played long before somebody thought about nations or race. And I don't think genocide was ever the goal of any of Hitler's aims, that may have turned out to be the consequence in some ways. It was to create a Greater Germany, not to kill the Jews and Slavs as the primary aim. Any killings that were done were in the name of this cause, not some kind of racist mission in itself. It was a racist state, yes, but most modern states are based on blood and only recently European nations are immigrant nations (and that's only largely due to colonialism). We make too much of this racist angle. And the ones who make the racist angle the most well known are plenty racist themselves (Jews/Israelis). But racism was not the goal in itself, that's how the Holocaust has been sold, but the Holocaust cannot be separated from the larger events of WW2 either. It wasn't about the Jews, it was about Greater Germany. That's equally worthy of condemnation I suppose, but do we condemn Napoleon in the same breath? He also waged a war of conquest across the continent. You can be sure that large numbers of civilians died in his conflicts too. And the bulk of the civilians that died under Hitler were not Germans, they were Poles. Polish Jews were part of a conquered state. In a way, Hitler's war was the last of the old order, where nations sought to exercise their control over other nations, and other cultures and ethnic groups. We haven't seen that as much in the past 60 years and that's probably a whole other topic. So the propaganda takes advantage of the fact that inter-culture wars seem weird and scary in this pseudo-egalitarian new way of thinking, where every culture is seen as exactly equal. And the wars seem to occur like the popping off of popcorn kernels even so, and that's how you can be sure it is propaganda and that nothing has really changed. We are not moving forward on some grand arc of history towards greater peace and prosperity, it's just the justifications for war that have changed.
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May 9, 2014 22:17
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:I wasn't saying genocide is the logical consequence of the militaristic nation-state, I am saying the desire for conquest and control is. This is because nations constantly feel like they are being encroached on by their enemies, they are aware that power is constantly slipping away from them. I think where some people might go wrong is assuming the Nazis were trying to create an empire based on a foundation of unshakeable strength, but what the feeling that goes into military aggression is generally "we have to do it to them before they do it to us". A nation has to create additional slippery ground for themselves so that they have maneuvering room. It's based out of fear. You've lost everybody. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum#World_War_II Here is an informative page in which "Greater Germany" is discussed. It's a little sickening and confusing to see somebody try to whitewash Nazi Germany in order to feed their post-colonial guilt complex. Here's why Napoleon isn't accused of genocide: he never advocated it. And he never created an entire state apparatus to shuttle innocent people into death camps. Genocide was Hitler's goal, as well as creating Lebensraum. The two went hand-in-hand in retarded matrimony, because the concepts behind Nazi Germany were a singularity of hatred and idiocy that escape all rational thought. Do you somehow think the Holocaust was just some collateral damage over the course of WWII? 10 million people weren't just hustled around in trains and -oh no!- they fell into a pit filled with Zyklon B gas meant for the ostfront! This train was meant for Stalingrad! Why's it in Auschwitz? Pseudo-intellectual word vomit doesn't make your views poignant or true. I'm glad your expertise on geopolitics and political science enable you to claim that "It wasn't about the Jews, it was about Greater Germany". quote:We make too much of this racist angle. And the ones who make the racist angle the most well known are plenty racist themselves (Jews/Israelis). "Who are the real racists here?  "Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 23:49 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 23:46
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I think the quickest way to explain why he's wrong would be to say that whereas the goal of Nazism was to secure the future well-being of the German racial state, genocide was not an unintended consequence but the deliberately chosen means for achieving that goal. Germany would be strengthened inwardly by eliminating Jews and other parasitic elements, and outwardly by conquering the Slavic countries and eliminating the population so the land could be settled by Germans. Also, the entire post was arrant nonsense but the worst bit is "We make too much of this racist angle." There is no "racist angle," racism is all 360 degrees of the Nazi worldview. The ideology is founded on the belief that the various races are in competition and extinction is the consequence of defeat, and the German race must be victorious at the expense of the others. That's the foundation, everything else is superstructure.
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May 10, 2014 00:02
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Actually Napoleon was a pretty lovely person, he re-instituted slavery and french forces might* have used a rudimentary gas chamber in quelling the rebellion. *Huge emphasis on the might have, cursory googling shows the most solid claim being that only about 100 were gassed if it even happened at all. Some french author has published a book saying it was 100,000 but his claims seem to be very widely rejected and the Daily Mail is the only english language publication to have made note of it.
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May 10, 2014 00:09
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Who are these people constantly talking about how awesome Napoleon is? The "non-Hitler sympathizing" guy who wants to tell us how Jews are congenital liars is railing against a person who doesn't exist to make his point. Hopefully this issue can be discussed without the Nazi apologists continuing to get all huffy about someone challenging their brilliant master plan to talk about how cool Hitler is. The question of why we view Nazis as the big ultimate evil when, indeed, many other governments and ideologies have done Bad Things is a legitimate one. The answer, if you ask me, is mainly that they arose in a time when this was already known to be unacceptable -- there were such a thing as international treaties on the rights of POWs and ethnic minorities and a large body of anti-racist modern thought before Hitler arose. That this happened in the same country that produced Nobel Peace Prize winning pacifists BEFORE Hitler rose to power is why it is so fascinating, combined with the sheer scale of mechanized depravity and the obsession with genocide even to the point of diverting materials from the war effort to keep the trains to the camps running. I would sure like to Ask the historian About Nazi Germany and get more information about current thought on this topic, though!
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May 10, 2014 00:16
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