Raskolnikov38 posted:

I believe the Stalin was necessary take focuses on him being the only possible soviet leader that would have industrialized the union to the point needed for the war.

Some Guy TT posted:

id be curious what reasoning if any there would be for say a trotskyist soviet union to not take the threat of hitler as seriously as stalin did

Sergg posted:

He also told us that he had read the document himself in which all future disabled German war vets were ordered to be gassed upon the war's conclusion. Nazi Germany crunched the numbers and decided they would have an untenable social welfare and medical system and that 400,000 Wehrmacht/Heer vets were to be "euthanized" once combat operations were over.

Fish of hemp posted:

Wouldn't it be lot easier to just leave them untreated?

Doctor Jeep posted:

even untreated they would still consume resources

Fish of hemp posted:

Wouldn't it be lot easier to just leave them untreated?

Grevling posted:

Yeah Norse Greenlanders went there to trade with Dorset people and later Inuit (the Dorset culture lived in eastern arctic Canada and Greenland before the Inuit came a few hundred years ago) and possibly to get timber. There was also trade across the Bering Strait and way before 1492 the Inuit used iron tools from Asia. North-America definitely wasn't completely isolated from Eurasia.

quote:

A further and more tangible explanation for the compliant attitude of the generals was sheer greed.

From 1940 onward, field marshals and colonel-generals, the two highest ranks, received secret monthly tax-exempt supplements to their already generous salaries, which more than doubled their income. On top of this, in 1941 and 1942 select officers also received “birthday presents” of up to 250,000 RM (reichsmarks), and later in 1944 a small number of generals were also given huge landed estates. The payments were in no way official and were not to be made public under any circumstances. Each recipient was made aware that the money came personally from Hitler and would continue entirely at his discretion.

As Norman Goda’s research revealed, such payments came with an explicit “quasi-contractual relationship in which huge amounts of money would be exchanged for obedience.”29 Thus, Field Marshals Brauchitsch, Bock, and Kluge were earning an illegitimate 4,000 RM a month, while Colonel-Generals Halder, Guderian, Hoepner, and Strauss were receiving an extra 2,000 RM a month.

Kluge, who enjoyed one of the best relationships with Hitler in 1941, was one of the select few to receive what members of the German resistance would later refer to as a “birthday bond.” In October 1942, he received 250,000 RM, a sum also paid to Field Marshals Keitel, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb (commanding Army Group North), and Gerd von Rundstedt (former commander of Army Group South). After the war the generals made no reference to these payments in accounting for their actions or inactions during the war.30 Their wartime devotion to Hitler was often problematic enough without the suggestion that their highly valued honor was in any way influenced by bribery. Obviously, it is impossible to know the exact motivation such money played for each man, but the inducement of such large sums can only have won Hitler favor, and the wartime record shows that many of the recipients were not inclined toward confrontation with the dictator.

quote:

Humor was one of the most important coping mechanisms for the soldiers at the front even though to the outsider a lot of it would be considered a ghoulish and macabre “gallows humour.”57 As one soldier remarked: “If we made jokes before some mission that were not entirely kosher, it was to cover our fear.”58 Similarly, Willy Peter Reese observed: “Our humour was born out of sadism, gallows humour, satire, obscenity, spite, rage, and pranks with corpses, squirted brains, lice, pus, and poo poo, the spiritual zero.”59 Such black humor often involved irony, which provided an insightful view into the war from the average soldier’s perspective.

During the winter retreat a cynical expression circulated among the soldiers, often preceded by a reversing of the helmet or field cap: “Forward, comrades, we’ve got to pull back!”60

Similarly, the German military abbreviation “Mot,” denoting motorized divisions, was sardonically changed by the men to “Hot,” reflecting the extent to which their previously mobile divisions had devolved to horse-drawn draft power.61

Another joke foretold that in 1962 a disheveled band of German soldiers would be found wandering in China who were no longer even able to speak German. They would still wear their medals but would have been forgotten by the high command.62

When the German high command later issued a special medal for those who had served in the east during the first winter of the war (Medaille Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42) it was mockingly dubbed by the men the “order of the frozen flesh” (Gefrierfleischorden).63

Helmut Pabst’s letters recount in some detail the humor he shared with his comrades, which even in the worst of times he noted, “always gets the better of us.”

Pretending to be serious, one of his friends would pick up a map of Russia and announce, “Now, once we get to Kazan…” (Kazan being over 700 kilometers east of Moscow).

Another would follow: “Does anyone know where Asia is?”

When one of the men spoke longingly about being home for Christmas, one of his comrades replied: “He didn’t say which year.”

There were also jokes about how one might speak to officers, especially those conducting training exercises who had not served in the east. One man would take on the role of the officer: “200 yards beyond village, Russian infantry! What’s your action?” To which another answered: “You tell them you’re going to the village to catch a few chickens for the frying pan … What else?”64

Even in the strictly hierarchical Wehrmacht, the relationship between the men and the officers was sometimes familiar enough to allow for humor. When Colonel Heinrich Eberbach was promoted to divisional command after his predecessor was wounded, the “grim wit” of his men wished him Hals und Bauchschuβ. This was a play on words from Hals und Beinbruch, for which the equivalent English expression would be “Break a leg!,” but instead Eberbach was essentially being told, “Get shot in the neck and stomach.”65

After 1941 the Nazi newspaper Der Völkische Beobachter published several collections of jokes under the title Privates Are Laughing: Humor from the Front. The humor it recorded was often defined by its “bitter” tone, and for men who had to endure the “Russian swamps,” supposedly without “wine, women and songs,” laughter was the only recourse. According to one submission by Werner Lass and Hans-Adolf Weber, it was only through the hard experiences of the front that soldiers’ humor acquired its amusement and joviality. Depictions of German superiority are conspicuously absent, and instead the curious self-directed irony reemerges, including some unlikely (because they were published in the Nazi press) depictions playing upon the German failings of the winter.66 Yet many of the most “bitter” jokes could never have been published in Nazi newspapers. Hermann Gӧring was the most obvious target, especially for soldiers, given his extravagant military uniforms covered in what seemed to many excessive decorations.

As one joke ran: “Gӧring recently added an arrow to the many medals on his chest. It’s there as a direction sign. ‘To be continued on my back.’”67

“Whispered jokes” about Hitler were also made. “What is the difference between Christ and Hitler? With Christ one died for all.”68 “What is the difference between the sun and Hitler? The sun ‘rises’ in the East, while Hitler ‘sinks’ in the East.”69

German humor was also fed from abroad, with BBC broadcasting providing an endless stream of satirical caricatures of Hitler and his Nazi government. An exiled Austrian actor, Johan Müller, who used the pseudonym Martin Müller, could imitate Hitler speeches so well that people could often only tell it was not the Nazi dictator by what was said. After Hitler had promised “final victory” in 1941, Müller couldn’t resist the opportunity to revisit this statement as Hitler at the end of 1941:

My message today coincides with the conclusion of a year in which I guaranteed final victory. But the year has only concluded according to the calendar, the same Gregorian calendar that was forced upon the Germanic world by international Jewry and a Roman pope named Gregor who had been bribed by Freemasons. Do we National Socialists, who have given the world a new order, want to be told by shadowy foreign forces when a year begins and when it ends? No, my radical comrades, I alone am entitled to decide when a year commences and when it concludes.70

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

civilian transports that were bringing refugees back after the Soviet conquest of Manchuria.

i say swears online posted:

weird, how did japanese civilians get into korea and manchuria

Slavvy posted:

Ahh yes the extremely thoughtful 'they were the bad guys!!' analysis

Terrible Opinions posted:

There is also a fairly obvious difference between fascist civilians back home and fascist "civilians" in occupied territory their government is currently committing a genocide in.

Slavvy posted:

So, what, there are different grades of acceptable warcrimes depending on who you do them to...?

Like you guys understand that war crimes are still war crimes even if you're doing it to the SS or whatever right?

"They should've just shot Tojo if they didn't like it " isn't a take I expected to see here I gotta say.

Slavvy posted:

If you're white (I am) and you think the solution to a lot of problems isn't just killing white people idk what to say, turn on your monitor and/or open a book I guess.

Also: racism against white people is structurally impossible in this country, hth.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Slavvy posted:

That would be fine if half of them weren't sex offenders, give me the AK I'll do it myself.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Slavvy posted:

Murdering the rich may be fantastic but it's definitely a way out.

Slavvy posted:

Doctor Jeep posted:

Doctor Jeep posted:

Chamale posted:

The US doctrine against Japan was to kill as many Japanese people as possible and eventually they'd surrender. It worked, and it was a war crime. Maybe they could have won the war with fewer casualties if they hadn't done war crimes but that's not a question history is equipped to answer.

Slavvy posted:

Doctor Jeep posted:

Terrible Opinions posted:

We're not gonna feel bad for concentration camp guards just cause they're on a boat going home rather than mulched at their posts.

Chamale posted:

The US doctrine against Japan was to kill as many Japanese people as possible and eventually they'd surrender. It worked, and it was a war crime. Maybe they could have won the war with fewer casualties if they hadn't done war crimes but that's not a question history is equipped to answer.