Renzatic on 11/6/2015 at 17:04
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
EVERYONE claims altruistic purposes to justify what they do. The Crusaders had to liberate oppressed Christians in the Holy Land, the Communists were simply fighting against the tyranny of the West, George Bush invaded Iraq to topple a tyrannical regime that was oppressing its people and funding terrorists, and so on.
That doesn't mean their motivations are genuinely altruistic.
It's a distinction that serves no purpose. The Nazis themselves likely believed in their heart of hearts that were doing something truly righteous and good when they enacted the Final Solution, and you could argue that due to this, they're not "truly evil".
But the act itself proves otherwise. The justification does nothing to excuse it.
Kolya on 11/6/2015 at 17:34
Every lunatic mass murdering bunch of imbeciles will present you with a whole catalogue of perfectly logical reasons why they are the chosen ones and the people they kill are not worth living. Stalinists certainly had their reasons too, like their belief in deterministic history.
Communism lasted longer than the Nazis and so it had different rulers and directions. And it wasn't originally based on murderous racism although political mass murder also happened.
Communist chic certainly tries to refer to the positive ideas that Communism had at times, or at least to some vague attitude of sticking up against the system.
It's certainly worth to think critically about but it isn't quite the same as excusing Nazi politics.
Sid Vicious tried Nazi chic in the 70s but it only worked as provocation.
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bjack on 11/6/2015 at 18:19
While one can successfully show the many differences in specifics between Stalin and Hitler, I tend to see their evils as a matter of scope and degrees of evil, as opposed to differences that matter. Does it matter that Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler? One is too many. Both dudes were real assholes.
As for the average German not having it too bad at the time? Well, that is also a matter of degree. Fascism attempts to break up the natural high, middle, and lower class boundaries by creating artificial vertical stratifications in daily societal discourse. You love to drive? Well, then you must go the Auto Drivers Club meeting every Tuesday night to keep your license. Want to cook? You must join the Farmers of Greater Germany and meet every Monday night. You must also join the Bakers of Heidelberg (even though you live in Baden Baden) and meet every Wednesday. Don't be late for your Thursday morning Exercise With Himmler radio program. Of course these are all made up things, but there were guilds like this that were Nazi sanctioned and were essentially compulsory. The idea was to fill up all you possible free time, so you would remain orthodox and stay out of trouble. Ration coupon books, ledgers that you had to be included on, lectures you must attend. Don't participate? "Hey what is wrong with Uwe Neimsche over there? He never goes to any meetings, yet he still looks well fed. Many he is dealing in the black market. Time to call the Gestapo…"
Anyway - an attempt to humor… Maybe I should open up a "Pol Pot Shop" in Denver? How about a "Castropub" in Miami? How about making "Charley Mansonite" It makes killer doors and paneling! :joke:
faetal on 11/6/2015 at 21:01
Tony does raise a valid point with the victors writing history bit, but I think it's way too much of a compensation to cut slack to the nation which marched people into gas chambers based on ethnicity, religion, disability and political stance. That said, it's definitely worth exploring how much worse Russia may have been* versus how harshly they are treated by history due to being useful to the winning side.
* - bear in mind that I'm not personally versed with the facts re Russia in WWII at present.
heywood on 12/6/2015 at 00:25
The victors writing the history point is somewhat valid, but I think the same point could be applied to our views of the Soviet Union.
Also, we were talking about what drives present day perceptions of Nazism and communism. By bringing up Nazi propaganda and American views of Stalin during the 1930s-40s, Tony is making arguments about past perceptions which aren't really relevant.
Also, what Kolya said.
Azaran on 12/6/2015 at 00:52
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
If you ever get the opportunity to talk to anyone who remembers Nazi Germany I suggest you do it. The story they tell is very different from what you read in American or British history books. For starters it was a much softer police state then academia would have you believe. In a lot of ways it was softer even than America in its current state as prior to the war measures such as zero probable cause checkpoints and the risk of having your assets seized arbitrarily simply didn't exist for most people. The average citizen was mostly left alone by the state...UNLESS you belonged to a targeted religion, racial group, or spoke out politically (sound familiar?).
I was really into Soviet and Nazi history a few years ago. True in the 1930's most people would be left alone, but in the 40's, life in Germany became much more difficult for the average German, as the Nazis began facing difficulties in the war, they started using terror inside Germany much more freely, where even a suspicion of defeatism or opposition could get you killed.
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Also..let's not forget that
Stalin killed over six million Ukrainians by deliberate starvation.
Let that sink in. In one incident alone Stalin killed more people than Hitler did during the Holocaust.
And you still think the Nazis have a worse reputation in history because they're worse than the soviets?
If seriously think that then you are extremely ignorant of 20th century history.
The Nazis (
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/) did kill more people than Stalin:
All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. These figures are of course subject to revision, but it is very unlikely that the consensus will change again as radically as it has since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s. Since the Germans killed chiefly in lands that later fell behind the Iron Curtain, access to Eastern European sources has been almost as important to our new understanding of Nazi Germany as it has been to research on the Soviet Union itself. (The Nazi regime killed approximately 165,000 German Jews.) And in Eastern Europe, Nazi terror and brutality greatly exceeded that of the Soviets. Soviets generally came into a town, often at night, arrested the men, took them into custody and had them shot out in the woods somewhere. The Nazis often came in broad daylight, would start executing people in the public square, then herd women and kids into a local building, set it on fire, and stood outside to shoot anyone who tried to escape. The anti-partisan operations (where entire towns and villages were liquidated) and the quelling of the Warsaw uprising were more monstrous than anything that Stalin managed to do.
In May 1943 in Operation Cottbus, the Germans sought to clear all partisans from an area about 140 kilometers north of Minsk. Their forces destroyed village after village by herding populations into barns and then burning the barns to the ground. On the following days, the local swine and dogs, now without masters, would be seen in villages with burned human limbs in their jaws. The official count was 6,087 dead; but the Dirlewanger Brigade alone reported fourteen thousand killed in this operation. The majority of the dead were women and children; about six thousand men were sent to Germany as laborers.48
Operation Hermann, named for Hermann Göring, reached the extreme of this economic logic in summer 1943. Between 13 July and 11 August, German battle groups were to choose a territory, kill all of the inhabitants except for promising male labor, take all property that could be moved, and then burn everything left standing. After the labor selections among the local Belarusian and Polish populations, the Belarusian and Polish women, children, and aged were shot. This operation took place in western Belarus—in lands that had been invaded by the Soviet Union and annexed from Poland in 1939 before the German invasion that followed in 1941. ((
http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471))
SD on 12/6/2015 at 16:49
How on earth did a comedy thread about Hitler-themed foods descend so quickly into a "the Nazis weren't that bad, really" type discussion?
faetal on 12/6/2015 at 16:55
Seems more like a "the nazis really were that bad" discussion from where I'm sitting.
ZylonBane on 13/6/2015 at 02:12
Quote Posted by SD
How on earth did a comedy thread about Hitler-themed foods descend so quickly into a "the Nazis weren't that bad, really" type discussion?
Trolly_Trollantula happened.
