Should Joseph Goebbels have been executed for being propaganda minister?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Should Joseph Goebbels have been executed for being propaganda minister?

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

rudatron posted:

The civilians of the soviet union were the #1 biggest casualties during the war, complaining about rapes by red soldiers after their entire people had been targeted for extermination, is some real bullshit. Had the USSR done what the germans did to them, they would have depopulated germany by about 1/6th. Keep that in mind.

Yeah, Nazis committed genocide, so red soldiers raping German women is justifiable!

I don't know if anybody explained this to you, but two wrongs don't make a right, and rape is never justifiable, especially war rape. Good loving god.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 05:18

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:46

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

rudatron posted:

Dude, war is hell, you cannot run a 'clean' war where everything goes according to plan, because at the center of all conflict is the human element, and the battlefield is a fundamentally inhumane environment.

Soviet high command had, as their first and only priority, winning the war. Given context, that's totally understandable. If they had reports of rapes, and did nothing, it's probably because they were in a life and death struggle for survival, where anything less than full commitment had a cost in terms of human lives.

Remember what these people have been through. Unless you went through that yourself, unless you can say that you can suffer what they have, and still remain 'morally pure', you have no right to judge them.

Winning

quote:

The rapes had begun as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944. In many towns and villages every female, aged from 10 to 80, was raped. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who was then a young officer, described the horror in his narrative poem Prussian Nights: "The little daughter's on the mattress,/Dead. How many have been on it/A platoon, a company perhaps?"
But Solzhenitsyn was rare: most of his comrades regarded rape as legitimate. As the offensive struck deep into Germany, the orders of Marshal Zhukov, their commander, stated: "Woe to the land of the murderers. We will get a terrible revenge for everything."

the

quote:

The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. "Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them," he noted. "One girl said to me in tears: 'He was an old man, older than my father'."

The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union. On March 29 1945 the central committee of the Komsomol (the youth organisation of the Soviet Union) informed Stalin's associate Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. "On the night of 24 February," General Tsygankov recorded in the first of many examples, "a group of 35 provisional lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander entered the women's dormitory in the village of Grutenberg and raped them."

war?

quote:

It is a shocking yet little-known chapter of Polish history. In 1945, 25 Benedictine nuns were raped repeatedly by Soviet soldiers before finding salvation through a French Red Cross doctor who delivered their babies in secret in their Polish convent.

Seventy years on, the events have inspired a French-Polish film that has been sold in more than 30 countries. The Innocents is about to be released in UK cinemas after its shortlisting as the official French entry for the Oscars.

Film-maker Anne Fontaine was inspired to direct it after hearing of the atrocities and the bravery of the Red Cross doctor, Madeleine Pauliac, who wrote at the time: �There were 25 of them, 15 were raped and killed by the Russians, the 10 survivors were raped, some 42 times, some 35 or 50 times each � None of this would be anything if five of them were not pregnant. They would come to ask my advice and to speak of abortion in veiled terms.�

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 05:52

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

steinrokkan posted:

You have any idea how loving difficult it was to herd the millions of men in the rear echelons of the Soviet Army, while ALSO commanding the front line formations of millions more, in a country severely depleted of manpower and with constant logistical problems that drew the attention of all the military talent, with an army drawing conscripts from dozens of disparate ethnicities speaking many different languages and at incredibly different levels of familiarity with the modern world? Hundreds of thousands of those conscripts were thrown from villages where they had not even seen a lightbulb in their lives to fight the greatest industrial war in history. And they were kept at the frontlines for months, if not years on end, with virtually no leave or rotation, unlike soldiers from Western Allied armies, subjected to constant stress, material destitution, and to a total, mind warping hatred of all things German for committing the worst genocide in human history. Meanwhile their commanders had the combined struggle of making their formations trudge forward against unceasing resistance, against incredible natural and man-made obstacles found in Prussia, AND of making sure they do not lose favour with Stalin and his political lackeys.

With a situation like that, a humanitarian form of war becomes impossible, the root of the problem was systemic, and impossible to fix under wartime conditions with the resources and situation the SU was dealt. Blame could be laid on Soviet political leadership for making the Red Army less institutionally capable than it could have been, but that's it.

So rape is okay, because the red army was tired? Putting aside how horrifying the argument is to make that German civilian women deserved to be raped because of that, how do you then justify the mass rape of liberated Russian and Polish women?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 05:47

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

Soldiers of every country rape if they can get away with it. This is part of war and has been since the dawn of human civilisation, and continues to be so.

This is pretty insanely sexist.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 06:33

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

Gengis Khan raped enough women that he's left a genitic marker in millions of people.

The US army had 26,000 + sexual assaults against Female soldiers in 2012 according to a pentagon estimate. Their own drat soldiers!

Men: they're all like Chinggis Khan!

Hey, did you also look up the number of men on men rape? The statistic may surprise you!

I have a real problem with the way you're painting men as uncontrollable sex and rape monsters. It demeans the sense that rape is abnormal and should be punished if all men are psychopaths; they're not, and your argument is bad.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 06:37

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

erm, men on men rape is still being committed by men?!?!!

my point is that rape is a tool of war and has been for all of human history right up to this day.

And where do victims who are men fit into your neat "all men are lusty rape monsters" paradigm?

And calling rape a valid "tool of war," in present day is pretty incorrect dumbass, esp. since 1949, Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits wartime rape and enforced prostitution.

quote:

Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.
Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.
Without prejudice to the provisions relating to their state of health, age and sex, all protected persons shall be treated with the same consideration by the Party to the conflict in whose power they are, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, religion or political opinion.
However, the Parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war.

But yeah, it's just a tool in the toolkit, :rolleyes:

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 06:43

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

I didn't say it was valid or right. Just that it is. Like it or not.

The geneva conventions didn't stop Americans raping in Vietnam, didn't stop all the US trained death squads in south america from raping. Doesn't stop ISIS from raping.

This is one of the reasons I abhor war, because it is the supreme crime from which all others follow, and that includes rape.

Hmmm, somehow I think most men aren't sociopathic rape monsters, and that's not just how "it is."

You should kind of think about getting therapy if that's your view of the world.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 06:49

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

The Kingfish posted:

Genocidal race wars are highly problematic.

Asserting that all men are rape monsters detracts from the abnormality and therefore undermines the scale of the atrocity of the mass rape, you idiot.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 06:55

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

Rape in war is the norm, not the unusual.

The only remarkable thing about the Russian rape of Germany was the scale.

Actually, if you look at the Rape of Nanking maybe even the scale wasn't that remarkable.

it's not all men, it's soldiers. There's a difference.

Rape

quote:

Armed groups - non-state actors as well as state militaries - often limit sexual violence by their members against civilians.

is inevitable

quote:

Almost three-quarters (72%) of all observations involved no reports of sexual violence, whereas 6% of the observations involved reports of sexual violence at the highest level.

in war?

quote:

While the forced movement of Palestinians out of some areas in 1948 was accompanied by a few documented cases of rape, at present neither Israelis nor Palestinians carry out sexual assaults despite the killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian groups and of Palestinian civilians by Israeli security forces. In December 2003, I asked representatives of three human rights organizations (two Israeli and one Palestinian) whether they believed sexual assault was occurring but was not reported, or was not in fact taking place. They independently and unanimously stated that they received information for almost no cases of sexual assault and that they believed they would hear of it occurring as they did receive reports of lesser instances of sexual harassment (for example, during pat-down searches at checkpoints). It could be the case that the intensive international monitoring of the conflict deters the practice of sexual violence, but both sides do not appear much deterred in their other practices by their frequent condemnation by international actors.

🤔

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:18

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

Well US soldiers rape their colleagues so I don't think this is too surprising.

And where do the men who are soldiers who are victimized fit into your paradigm of "beep bop all soldiers are rape monsters?"

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:24

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

Not all soldiers.

So you're not gonna read the articles because they conflict with your very dumb worldview, got it.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:25

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

JFairfax posted:

why are you denying that rape happens in war?

Why are you denying culpability of actors and simply tossing your hands up and going "well gee, rape is inevitable, best let it slide, boys will boys will be soldiers will be rape monsters?"

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:27

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

The Kingfish posted:

Hmm so you think that rape happens as a result of war?? Well how about these three outliers where it happened less than normal?

quote:

This policy brief summarizes key trends in conflict-related sexual violence in 48 conflicts in 33 African countries, encompassing 236 armed-conflict actors, including state armies, militias and rebel groups.

A majority of the armed actors in African conflicts (ca. 72%) had no known record of sexual violence.

🤔

e:

The Kingfish posted:

Stone Cold trying to advocate for the idea of a sanitary war. Extremely gross in my opinion.

glad you love rape, but can you keep your sexual preferences out of a discussion on the culpability of the red army in the mass rapes perpetuated in the wwii period?

stone cold fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Feb 17, 2017

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:31

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

The Kingfish posted:

Those were some highly moral wars stone cold. Extremely relevant data to the eastern front 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻

If you're going to attack the literature, you should at least read it, lest you look a buffoon.

:tipshat:

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:46

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

The Kingfish posted:

You should probably read the studies before you post them.

I don't see how any of them a. undermine the argument that the red army was culpable for the mass civilian rapes of both German women and their own liberated women hundred of miles from the front and b. argue that rape in war is inevitable?

so, like, :irony:

e: example:

quote:

As the Soviet army moved westward onto German territory in early 1945, large numbers of women were raped.4While the earlier Soviet offensives in Romania and Hungary had seen widespread rape of civilian women (particu- larly after the siege of Budapest), the practice intensified as the army moved into East Prussia and Silesia. Although women of various ethnicities were raped in the course of looting villages and cities, German women were particularly tar- geted. In German villages in East Prussia, �it was not untypical for Soviet troops to rape every female over the age of twelve or thirteen.� As the Soviet army occupied Berlin in late April and early May 1945, thousands of women and girls were raped, often by several men in sequence, often in front of family or neigh- borhood, sometimes on more than one occasion. Soldiers sometimes detained a girl or woman for some days in her home or elsewhere and subjected her to repeated rape. Even after occupation became more institutionalized, Soviet sol- diers continued to rape girls and women. Sexual violence gradually subsided as occupation authorities realized the harm being done to the Soviet postwar polit- ical project and gradually instituted stronger rules against fraternization in gen- eral and rape in particular.
The pattern of sexual violence during the Soviet offensive varied in different settings. Naimark notes the contrast between the �exemplary� behavior of Soviet troops in Bulgaria and the generally better behavior toward Polish and other Slavs, with the looting and rape that occurred in Germany and Hungary, both non-Slavic group.6 However, sexual violence in Berlin and Budapest sug- gests as well another pattern: in European history there appears to be a pattern of rape (and looting) following prolonged sieges as a form of punishment for holding out rather than surrendering. Moreover, throughout the offensive, frontline troops were less prone to rape than troops that came through later. During the occupation, women and girls were more vulnerable in border towns, naval centers, and transportation centers than elsewhere. Local variations also emerged as some commanders enforced the regulations and others did not.

stone cold fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Feb 17, 2017

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:52

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

rudatron posted:

Also the argument about the soldiers themselves is less 'boys will be boys' and more 'that is what war does to you'. Unless you have been through similar trauma, then come out the other side as a totally well adjusted and upright person (hint: you haven't, because you can't, no one can), you have no right to be judgemental. That's just pure arrogance.

I'm gonna toss out, I'm a rape survivor and I've never gone out and raped somebody....so....

e: this is also in response to

JFairfax posted:

are you loving retarded, not all soldiers rape, but a large number do. and who knows maybe the ones that get raped also rape??! being a victim doesn't mean you can't be a perp.

I think you're the one being a bit beep boop here.

stone cold fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Feb 17, 2017

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 08:08

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

steinrokkan posted:

Sounds easy if
- the military isn't in collusion with the rest of the state
- the military can't hide the truth and strongarm other institutions

Sure sounds like you like coming up with reasons we as a society should go easy on rapists and give up!

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 21:48

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:46

stone cold: Feb 15, 2014

steinrokkan posted:

Exactly, a fight against militarism is practically a fight for mandatory rape.

The military must be politically destroyed before civilian oversight can become a thing. Hell, you know what, I'm gonna say that military personnel having any political clout whatsoever is the chief reason why violence against civilians becomes permissible in militaries. Not just because of the personal activities of these people, but also because it allows the military a privileged position of maintaining institutions parallel to the civilian state and undermining the power of the latter.

You seem real interested in denying the culpability of the red army, so I think that's why you're pro rape, hth

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 21:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Should Joseph Goebbels have been executed for being propaganda minister?