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Kanine posted:I always had trouble picturing how soldiers being otherwise normal people before the war, can kill innocent and potentially have the capacity to cause even more horror with acts like rape and wanton looting/destruction. I understand killing other soldiers through an instinct of self-defense/following orders/etc but what part of the mind of a soldier lets them hurt innocent people like that? Like how could so many people (ie soviet invaders pillaging en masse, or any of the countless German soldiers killing locals earlier in the war) inflict bodily harm on a man/child/woman right in front of them, screaming and (in another language) begging for mercy and still hurt them? How could those people all go back home and raise families and be normal human beings after that? *shrug* It was war. I was a policemen before the war and got a job in an Einsatzkommando when we were deployed in the east. I was horrified when I had to shoot my first truckload of women and children and we had to drink heavily before and after the job. A few days after this, a friend and me came up with a solution. He shot the mothers and I shot the children, so it would appear mercyful to me that they don't have to live without their mothers. He told himself the same thing, but in reverse. That worked for us. Or another guy in the same situation reports that he vomited and shook violently after the first truckload. A few days later, they'd bring truck after truck and his hand was still as he shot and he felt nothing. Memory works in a way that after a few years, you will have supressed these things, like they never happened. Your memory shapes the things that were in a way that they conform with the person that you want to be, not like capturing things "as they were". Some people were dead set that they'd never did such things, but the evidence was there. There are several ways that this can work. It's kinda old that I always point to the Wehrmachtsausstellung, but this is literally the best example that you can hope for, because there the old soldiers got triggered and quite a few remembered things that they had forgotten for decades. There's good literature in german about the whole range of reactions that you'd see there.
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May 14, 2015 08:11
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JaucheCharly posted:*shrug* It was war. I was a policemen before the war and got a job in an Einsatzkommando when we were deployed in the east. I was horrified when I had to shoot my first truckload of women and children and we had to drink heavily before and after the job. A few days after this, a friend and me came up with a solution. He shot the mothers and I shot the children, so it would appear mercyful to me that they don't have to live without their mothers. He told himself the same thing, but in reverse. That worked for us. This is a quote, right? You should probably mark it as such.
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May 14, 2015 08:17
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Tevery Best posted:This is a quote, right? You should probably mark it as such. i am pretty sure jauchecharly, citizen of vienna in the year of god 2015, has not gotten a job in an einsatzkommando
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May 14, 2015 08:19
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My prof mentioned that the Japanese army brutalized its soldiers during training. Discipline could involve a chain of slapping. CO slaps you, you slap the next person, so on and so forth. The idea was that the soldiers were complicit in brutalizing one another. Or they'd conduct long marches in hot weather with canteens full of water that they were forbidden from drinking from. The result is a force that can take a lot of punishment but probably has little regard for those who aren't one of them because of the dehumanizing experiences they've had.
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May 14, 2015 08:19
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HEY GAL posted:i am pretty sure jauchecharly, citizen of vienna in the year of god 2015, has not gotten a job in an einsatzkommando I know, but I had to do a double take at first. Quotation marks would be a really nice touch.
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May 14, 2015 08:20
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JaucheCharly posted:*shrug* It was war. I was a policemen before the war and got a job in an Einsatzkommando when we were deployed in the east. I was horrified when I had to shoot my first truckload of women and children and we had to drink heavily before and after the job. A few days after this, a friend and me came up with a solution. He shot the mothers and I shot the children, so it would appear mercyful to me that they don't have to live without their mothers. He told himself the same thing, but in reverse. That worked for us. The Einsatzkommando soldiers had problems killing, but they were fanatical crazy soldiers, so they contextualized it a different way. They linked the struggle inside themselves to be okay with what they were doing with the greater German struggle they believed themselves a part of. As in, they had a physical struggle to shoot guns and fight and destroy their enemies (mostly committing massacres) and a simultaneous inner struggle against watching helpless people die in front of their guns. They, of course, imagined themselves triumphing over both. Didn't stop them from eating their guns more often than the high command liked, which is something that directly lead to gas chambers.
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May 14, 2015 08:23
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Tevery Best posted:This is a quote, right? You should probably mark it as such. It's a paraphrase of an account. Policemen are a nice example, because they did jobs in EKs and went right back to their jobs after the war as if nothing had happened. The is also no research about their exact role afaik, we just know that lots of policemen ended up in EKs. The interior ministry blocked all research projects so far.
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May 14, 2015 08:26
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cheerfullydrab posted:The Einsatzkommando soldiers had problems killing, but they were fanatical crazy soldiers, Most of them were just ordinary German dudes.
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May 14, 2015 08:27
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Argas posted:My prof mentioned that the Japanese army brutalized its soldiers during training. Discipline could involve a chain of slapping. CO slaps you, you slap the next person, so on and so forth. The idea was that the soldiers were complicit in brutalizing one another. Or they'd conduct long marches in hot weather with canteens full of water that they were forbidden from drinking from. The result is a force that can take a lot of punishment but probably has little regard for those who aren't one of them because of the dehumanizing experiences they've had. There's a picture of japanese soldiers laughing like crazy, standing next to a ditch full of dead bodies. The ideas was to learn to associate dead bodies with humour, to overwrite any doubt/negative feelings about it. That forced laughter, and the corpses, it's a hosed up picture.
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May 14, 2015 08:36
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cheerfullydrab posted:The Einsatzkommando soldiers had problems killing, but they were fanatical crazy soldiers, so they contextualized it a different way. They linked the struggle inside themselves to be okay with what they were doing with the greater German struggle they believed themselves a part of. As in, they had a physical struggle to shoot guns and fight and destroy their enemies (mostly committing massacres) and a simultaneous inner struggle against watching helpless people die in front of their guns. They, of course, imagined themselves triumphing over both. Didn't stop them from eating their guns more often than the high command liked, which is something that directly lead to gas chambers. That's a convenient and simplicistic way to externalize the holocaust, but it's not the case. The people that signed up for EKs, SKs, the SD, etc. were pretty normal people by yesterday's (and at least 20 years after the war's) standards. Don't forget all the Wehrmacht units that were part in Sonder- and Partisanenaktionen. It was after Himmler's visit to the Mogilev area in fall of 1941 where he witnessed shootings that he concluded that they need to find a better way to kill more people. [e: Concluded might be the wrong word, but he made the final decision based on the experience of the visit]. Strain on the members of the EKs was one point, but not the most important one. Security considerations were high on the list, as jews would move from one ghetto to another or join the partisans and there were a few uprisings against dissolvements of ghettos that had to be broken by massive force (by the WM, with heavy weapons) that delayed actions and raised uncomfort with the OKH. Fear of partisan activity was the most pressing concern for the WM, no matter that it wasn't substantial at that point. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 10:33 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 08:57
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Trin Tragula posted:You know that thing about how war is all about "hurry up and wait"? That. Dismounted they were useful to have around in reserve to throw into the line for a while as a sticking plaster while more infantry was brought up. In the end some of the British cav got chucked into something called the "Dismounted Cavalry Division", which is rather like having a Strolling Tank Division or a Gunless Artillery Brigade. Others ended up being re-trained to use armoured cars. Mostly they chilled in the rear, waiting for the breakthrough. After a while they sent Allenby to the Middle East and he took a lot of cavalry with him, a theatre where they could actually do some proper donkey walloping. A few more unlucky sods ended up going to Waziristan to keep the peace there. I seem to recall that the Cavalry's job on the Western Front was to exploit a major breakthrough... the kind of major breakthrough that didn't actually happen. This could be half-remembered History Channel garbage though. Also... Ulysses S. Grant: awesome, or totally loving awesomesauce?
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May 14, 2015 10:23
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His name was US GRANT, which is so Murrica a bald eagle sheds a tear every time someone says it, so he was pretty fukken awesome. So long as he wasn't in the white house
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May 14, 2015 10:45
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Re. Soviet war crimes in WWII, something to remember is that Red Army soldiers were encouraged by their superiors to act differently and more harshly in Germany than they were elsewhere. Not that they did not commit war crimes elsewhere, but Soviet command and propaganda centered around the rape of German women and that soldiers should 'break their racial pride'. There was also a large element of revenge in the looting and raping that took place in occupied Germany, especially when Soviet troops came across wealthy Prussian homes after the destruction the Germans had inflicted when they had invaded. Once the Red Army approached Berlin the high command realized that they would be competing for occupation of post-war Germany with the Allies, and so began attempts to tone down the atrocities being committed and the rhetoric being pumped out by the propaganda ministry. Obviously with everything that happened in Berlin this wasn't exactly successful, but there were definite changes in the leaflets and papers being sent to the soldiers - I can't remember the name but up until this point the main propagandist was a firebreathing anti-German, who got replaced for fears that his work would inflame the German population and make the Soviets look worse to the Allies.
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May 14, 2015 11:41
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Because bopping around Europe with a bunch of dudes you know intimately makes you crave for the opposite sex and a release? That and something about going months on end, if not years, dodging bullets, artillery shells, tanks, airplanes and other weapons of death can really destabilize your moral guidelines. And then there's just some people who are assholes to begin with. This is really only a small part of the explanation. Soviet soldiers had been brought up, for quite some time, to hate and dehumanize the Germans. Couple this with officers forcing all soldiers in their platoons to participate in the gang rapes of girls down to 8 years old in Prussia, and you get an idea of the desensitization visited on the troops.
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May 14, 2015 11:50
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I got a question about naval boarding & prizes. When I read about the age of sail, there seem to be warship that are captured and change sides several times during their career. And the sailors and officers seem to rely on prizes to make their pay acceptable. I have heard of some prizes in WW2, but those seem to be threated as exceptional events. And payment of prize money seems to have stopped in WW1. But presumably it had already become a rare event by then. Did that happen with the rise of steamships, or did it take a while after that? Or did it even become rare earlier then that? Also, when was the last time a warship was captured at sea in reusable condition? Excluding ships surrendering at the end of a war, I suppose.
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May 14, 2015 12:02
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MikeCrotch posted:Re. Soviet war crimes in WWII, something to remember is that Red Army soldiers were encouraged by their superiors to act differently and more harshly in Germany than they were elsewhere. Not that they did not commit war crimes elsewhere, but Soviet command and propaganda centered around the rape of German women and that soldiers should 'break their racial pride'. There was also a large element of revenge in the looting and raping that took place in occupied Germany, especially when Soviet troops came across wealthy Prussian homes after the destruction the Germans had inflicted when they had invaded. Ilya Ehrenberg?
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May 14, 2015 12:09
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I seem to recall that the Cavalry's job on the Western Front was to exploit a major breakthrough... the kind of major breakthrough that didn't actually happen. This could be half-remembered History Channel garbage though. No, you're right on that. That's the reason as Trin says that cavalry spent a lot of time hanging around the back, waiting for the opportunity to breakout while sometimes getting used to plug gaps if need be. In the BEF at least this became a bone of contention between 'cavalry' guys like Haig and Gough, who wanted to keep the cavalry ready for the breakthrough that's going to happen *any minute now, no seriously guys!*, and 'infantry' guys like Plumer who wanted the cavalry to get over themselves and do something useful like the rest of the footsloggers. The idea of using cavalry as a breakthrough arm wasn't even a bad idea as such, but it was hampered by the thing that hampered everything in WWI - bad communication. There simply wasn't good enough communication equipment to get cavalry to exploit breaks in the line before they closed up. Cavalry were used by the Allies during the Hundred Days offensive once things had opened up, though here they came across another problem in that they had trouble coordinating with tanks. Tanks (we're talking about light 'Whippet' style tanks here) weren't able to keep up with the cavalry, but as soon as the cavalry outran the tanks they took massive losses from enemy fire.
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May 14, 2015 12:09
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quote:Not that they did not commit war crimes elsewhere, but Soviet command and propaganda centered around the rape of German women and that soldiers should 'break their racial pride'. Citation very needed. The only things I have ever seen that could be read as official support for rape was anecdotal accounts of Stalin and some other commanders being blase about the whole thing in front of westerners. The official line (at least once the tide had turned) was, as I understand it, that the Soviets were acting to liberate the misled German workers from the hitlerite leaders that oppressed them, with an emphasis on German communist resistance and collaborators like Paulus's Free Germany committee. This was also useful for the later pivot towards anti-western propaganda, that the German aggression could be blamed on fascist forces still in positions of influence in the west.
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May 14, 2015 12:19
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tonberrytoby posted:I got a question about naval boarding & prizes. I can't give an authoritative answer with specific dates and figures and such, but I suspect the decline of boarding had much to do with the rise of explosive shells and rifled artillery. During the Age of Sail, cannons fired roundshot, which is just a lump of iron. It takes a lot of roundshot to actually sink a ship (it didn't often happen actually, outright sinking a ship during the Age of Sail), and cannons were at the time relatively inaccurate and short-ranged anyways, so there's quite a lot of room to potentially get in close, board, and take the enemy. But with rifled artillery, gunners could expect to accurately hit enemy ships from much greater distances than before, and with explosive shells they could expect to do tremendous damage with even a single hit. Under those circumstances, by the time you get close enough to board odds are that one ship or the other is already a shattered, flaming wreck. Edit: The change happened roughly during the mid-Victorian era, coinciding with the rise of steamships though steamships in and of themselves didn't contribute much either way to the decline of boarding. Edit edit: Not sure when the last boarding action against warships was exactly, but Wikipedia suggests that the last major British boarding action was an incident during WW2 against a POW ship, which while dramatic and contested doesn't really count as a proper warship, does it? Tomn fucked around with this message at 12:39 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 12:26
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JaucheCharly posted:Ilya Ehrenberg? Him! Fangz posted:Citation very needed. The only things I have ever seen that could be read as official support for rape was anecdotal accounts of Stalin and some other commanders being blase about the whole thing in front of westerners. It's not as clear cut as I originally remembered, but Ilya Ehrenberg has been accused of using lines like the one I said in his propaganda. The quote was from Berlin by Beevor, i'd have to dig the book out to find out where he gets that assertion from.
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May 14, 2015 12:34
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It's worth noting that the modern definition of crime against humanity re: rape is that where the rape is a widespread and systemic behaviour it only takes indifference from a person in authority for that person to become complicit. So if you know it's happening, could stop it, and shrug your shoulders you would be guilty of a crime against humanity.
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May 14, 2015 12:39
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MikeCrotch posted:Him! Well, Ilya is (a) not the only Soviet propagandist, (b) was in all the things people quote, writing in 1942, with the war likely to be fought on Soviet soil for the forseeable future and any idea of invading Germany remote, and (c), also writing stuff like: http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?act=ST&f=20&t=10653&view=getnewpost quote:Anger is a minor and low feeling. In daily life we hide it. Untalented poets conceal their rage. The greedy won't dare make their fear for their money into ideology. Old men, envious of other's youth, will complain and finally shut up - but the Fascist makes this anger into a religion. There is no human fellowship in fascism - the German fascist despises the Italian fascist; the Romanian fascist dreams of strangling the Hungarian. There is no justice in fascism - the German peasant derives from the war only his grave, at best a pair of crutches, for Goering - massive profits he shamelessly stores overseas. Fascism has no law - the whims of madman Hitler replaced all laws in Germany. For centuries humanity attempted to perfect the protections for individual men - but here in 1942 torturer Himmler torments French scientists, Norwegian painters, Czech workers and Polish peasants alike. International law, criminal law, civil law - all replaced with the sick madness of any random SS man. There is no art in fascism - books are replaced by propaganda brochures, universities closed down or made into propagandist training facilities. Europe, once complex, fertile and curious as the human brain has been formed by the Fascist boot into a uniform desert. EDIT: Disinterested posted:It's worth noting that the modern definition of crime against humanity re: rape is that where the rape is a widespread and systemic behaviour it only takes indifference from a person in authority for that person to become complicit. So if you know it's happening, could stop it, and shrug your shoulders you would be guilty of a crime against humanity. Right, this is not at all to say that the Russians did not commit abominable acts, and I don't think it's impossible for some parts of the soviet army to have ordered deliberate atrocities on some scale. (Personally I think many of the estimates typically cited are too high, but war-crime counting is generally a dumb game to play.) But I think there's a tendency to exaggerate beyond what the evidence supports, and if people are extrapolating out into 'oh and therefore rape was the modus operandi for the soviet army, so when they occupied Bornholm we should assume they raped and looted because that's what the Red Army always does, innit'... then that's well, rather unfair. There's also a history of using soviet crimes and alleged crimes to retroactively justify or distract from Nazi WWII atrocities, so I am pretty automatically suspicious about it. Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:50 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 12:40
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MikeCrotch posted:Him! It was also in Ivan's war, but that doesn't make it a secure source per se. In this blog entry are 2 sources mentioned that decline that such a leaflet had existed: https://shoabloger.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/in-defense-of-ilya-ehrenburg/ What we do know is that alot of bad things happened in east prussia. A while ago we had this discussion and I tried to find german accademic literature about it, but there wasn't anything meaningful. 2 days ago I was reading an article about Erinnerungspolitik in the 2000s, where this came up a few times. It's still a deeply problematic issue, because there's a real quagmire of revisionist interests and ngos like the Vetriebenenverbände that managed to shape public discourse and de-contextualize it in a way that's worrysome. There is some further accademic literature in this article that deals with what happened there, but I don't have time right now to read it. If you're able to read german and have some time and interest, I can give these sources.
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May 14, 2015 13:04
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Both Beevors World War 2 and Ivan's War make note that officers encouraged group rape in some cases, though the reasons are unclear.
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May 14, 2015 13:13
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MikeCrotch posted:Him! I think I've found the Beevor article http://www.culturahistorica.es/beevor/war_and_rape.germany.pdf quote:Even if Ilya Ehrenburg was not responsible for the most notorious statement attributed to him - German propaganda claimed that he had urged the soldiers of the Red Army to take German women as their lawful booty and break their racial pride - he did describe Germany as „The Blonde Witch‟, a figure of hate calculated to stir up violence against German women. So, er, yeah. It's Nazi propaganda. Annoyingly Beevor doesn't seem to want to cite his sources ever. EDIT: ^^^ Yeah, but some anecdotes included stuff like penal battalion people shooting dead Red Army guards to get at the women they were protecting - which it can be assumed, was definitely not approved Soviet policy. Fangz fucked around with this message at 13:20 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 13:15
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I stand corrected!
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May 14, 2015 13:19
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Let us also remember that rape is an endemic issue even in our modern enlightened times where not everyone is running around with weapons and PTSD and easy excuses.
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May 14, 2015 13:31
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I don't think we're discussing if there was rape, but rather if it was widespread individual cases or systematically approved/accepted.
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May 14, 2015 13:42
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JaucheCharly posted:I don't think we're discussing if there was rape, but rather if it was widespread individual cases or systematically approved/accepted. From what I've read, the mass rape wasn't organized, but the Soviet leadership knew about it happening and they really didn't try to stop it.
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May 14, 2015 13:51
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Apparently unofficial policy was three days of free rape and looting. The Central Asians were so bad the advance Russian troops warned the people.
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May 14, 2015 13:57
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Fangz posted:I think I've found the Beevor article really, talk about "racial pride" seems like an odd thing to come up in soviet propaganda in the first place
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May 14, 2015 14:00
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Hogge Wild posted:From what I've read, the mass rape wasn't organized, but the Soviet leadership knew about it happening and they really didn't try to stop it. Yeah, this is what I think was the case.
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May 14, 2015 14:41
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Agean90 posted:His name was US GRANT, which is so Murrica a bald eagle sheds a tear every time someone says it, so he was pretty fukken awesome. So long as he wasn't in the white house Oddly enough his name wasn't actually U.S. Grant. It was Hiram Ulysses Grant. "HUG" would have been an unfortunate moniker to get saddled with at West Point so sometime around there it became US Grant instead, possibly due to a typo in his appointment letter. But yeah, total badass not just as a strategist. He was also a very skilled horseman, setting records and amazing everyone with his talents. "At Monterrey he demonstrated his equestrian ability, by volunteering to carry a dispatch through sniper-lined streets while hanging off the side of his horse, keeping the animal between him and the enemy." Great strategist and general, personally brave and physically talented but a piss poor politician and absolutely abysmal business man.
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May 14, 2015 14:41
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V. Illych L. posted:really, talk about "racial pride" seems like an odd thing to come up in soviet propaganda in the first place A lot of it was "these guys love our race, we fought alongside them in some battle 500 years ago, we're buddies, please don't set their houses on fire".
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May 14, 2015 15:03
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tonberrytoby posted:Also, when was the last time a warship was captured at sea in reusable condition? Excluding ships surrendering at the end of a war, I suppose. I believe the last ships to strike their colors to enemy vessels was the Russian fleet at the conclusion of Tsushima.
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May 14, 2015 15:27
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Beevor is a hack and you shouldn't read himMikeCrotch posted:
Regarding rape and looting by the Red Army, they did care when it happened and did punish it. The Red Army also unfairly gets blamed for the acts of other nations. In a leaflet distributed to troops posted:Officers and soldiers! We go to the enemy. Everyone must keep his composure, everyone should be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas, regardless of whether they are German, Czech, and Pole Are not be subjected to violence. Those responsible will be punished according to the laws of war. On conquered territory sex with women is not allowed. Perpetrators of violence and rape will be shot. Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation posted:In the first months of 1945 for atrocities committed against the local people 4148 officers and a large number of rank and file were convicted by military tribunals .The punishment for some was the death penalty Military Prosecutor of the 1st Byelorussian Front Justice L. Yachenina posted:We have to admit that the facts of looting, violence and other illegal activities on the part of our soldiers against the local German population not only stopped, but even in the period from 22 April to 5 May continued to be fairly widespread. I quote figures on this provision 7 armies on our front: the total number of atrocities by the military against the local population, recorded for these seven armies, 72 Rapes, 38 counts of robberies, 3 murders, and 11counts of 3 point illegal activities L. Beria posted:In Berlin there is a large number of prisoners released from the camp of the Italians, the French, the Poles, the Americans and British, who take the local population belongings and property, loaded on a wagon and head west. Measures are being taken to the recovery of property stolen from them. Military Prosecutor of the 1st Byelorussian Front Justice L. Yachenina posted:Violence, especially robberies and looting were widely engaged by liberated prisoners, especially the Italians, the Dutch, and even the Germans. Moreover, they outrageously blamed our military personnel for the acts Osmar White posted:The Red Army, dominated by severe discipline, robbery, rape and abuse is not more than in any other zone of occupation. Wild stories about atrocities emerge because of the exaggerations and distortions of individual cases under the influence of nervousness caused by a surfeit of manners Russian soldiers and their love of vodka. One woman told me that most of the stories about Russian atrocities from which their hair stand on end, in the end, was forced to admit that the only evidence that she had seen with his own eyes, was drunken Russian officers fired their guns into the air, or bottles T___A fucked around with this message at 15:42 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 15:40
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Kanine posted:I always had trouble picturing how soldiers being otherwise normal people before the war, can kill innocent and potentially have the capacity to cause even more horror with acts like rape and wanton looting/destruction. I understand killing other soldiers through an instinct of self-defense/following orders/etc but what part of the mind of a soldier lets them hurt innocent people like that? Like how could so many people (ie soviet invaders pillaging en masse, or any of the countless German soldiers killing locals earlier in the war) inflict bodily harm on a man/child/woman right in front of them, screaming and (in another language) begging for mercy and still hurt them? How could those people all go back home and raise families and be normal human beings after that? I imagine it would be a combination of seeing what they had as they drove the Germans back and hearing no doubt exaggerated tales from others. When you see a bit of cruelty you're more likely to believe tales of worse barbarism. Take that and throw in the odd soldier who's rather low on the old humanity/empathy scale to begin with and you will probably get either "looking the other way" or "I wouldn't do it, but it isn't like they didn't bring it upon themselves" attitudes. In worse cases they'll join in and either justify it or deny it later, internally and/or externally. Think about how many times in American memoirs they say they either was or heard of a guy shooting prisoners of stealing or whatever.
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May 14, 2015 15:58
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nvm
my dad fucked around with this message at 16:25 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 16:18
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Agean90 posted:His name was US GRANT, which is so Murrica a bald eagle sheds a tear every time someone says it, so he was pretty fukken awesome. So long as he wasn't in the white house Grant was actually a good to kinda great president. He cracked down on the klan so hard it took until the 1920s for it to rebuild, had the strictest enforcement of reconstruction of all the reconstruction presidents, was not a genocidal maniac to native americans and instituted some civil service reform. Lost Causers seek to tarnish his presidency because it took place during the Gilded Age where corruption was rife and Grant was too trusting of some of his advisors. Raskolnikov38 fucked around with this message at 17:05 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 17:02
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Grant was actually a good to kinda great president. He cracked down on the klan so hard it took until the 1920s for it to rebuild, had the strictest enforcement of reconstruction of all the reconstruction presidents, was not a genocidal maniac to native americans and instituted some civil service reform. Lost Causers seek to tarnish his presidency because it took place during the Gilded Age where corruption was rife and Grant was too trusting of some of his advisors. Also because the general allegation of alcoholism is thrown around to taint everything.
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May 14, 2015 17:06
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