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Old 05-04-2017, 09:43 AM
 
Location: Denver, CO
2,847 posts, read 2,165,384 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by damba View Post
It's primarily due to lack of education on what transpired in some cases. YMMV.

FWIW, my in-laws from Poland survived both invasions. They commented that as bad as it was to be taken over by Hitler's evil soldiers, the Russian (communist) occupation was far worse. The psychological warfare used to wipe out formerly 'free' aspects of society, stamp out religious and cultural practices, made life hellish in a different way, longer term.
If the Nazis had won a lot fewer Poles would be around to experience the hellish life in the longer term.
The Nazis' long term plan was to reduce all Slavic peoples, Poles, Ukrainians and Russians included, to serfs who would only be taught enough words to avoid traffic signs.
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Old 05-04-2017, 10:05 AM
 
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Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
Marxism was designed to bring about a better world with the wealth more evenly distributed and the aristocracy eliminated. In ideal terms it was going to be from each according to his means, to each according to his needs. It was a doctrine which had a lot more in common with the ideals of Christianity than may be claimed by capitalism. In practice it turned out to not work as Marx envisioned it, but that does not change the intent.

German fascism was a doctrine which held that the Germans were the planet's natural master race and thus entitled to murder or enslave all those who stood in the way of their global domination. It was to be a world run by the Aryans for the benefit and glorification of Aryans.

You are unable to distinguish between such doctrines?



In theory and stated mission, I won't argue with you. It is worth mentioning that Christianity and Judaism mention a sovereign God who gives man free will, and the basis of our liberties in western culture are based on that sovereign being... if God gives man free will, so should man give free will to other men. As communism fleshed out, those tenants of the Torah and the Bible ran counter productive to the Communist Party and needed to be stamped out. Religion was stamped out in the Soviet Union, and possession of a Bible in modern day China is prohibited. Sound familiar? It should because in Nazi Germany, the Jews were the first to be blamed for all of the world's ills and if they could just be done away with, Germans were promised paradise. The Christians would have likely been next, as Hitler saw them as a necessary evil that could be dealt with later. Luckily, the world never found out.


As for German Fascism, it isn't a doctrine that says that Germans are the master race, that's Aryanism. The two should be separated, as there were non-German populations that agreed with Aryanism even if they weren't very big on fascism. German fascism, or at least their flavor of it, was a conclusion drawn from observing the communists and deciding that it would be against Germany's interests for a central government to socialize industry, but instead socialize the German populace. Did it work? No. Did it work better than communism? Perhaps. Germany could have won... they had better engineers, better weapons, and better aircraft than anyone. German industry worked more efficiently than Russian industry, so their military... from the generals to the grunts, were better equipped, or equipped at all. What they also had was Hitler who seemed to want to take the entire planet at once which doomed them. To this day, the most mass-produced aircraft in the history of the planet is the Messerschmidt ME109 fighter. Russia at the time couldn't pull that off.
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Old 05-04-2017, 10:14 AM
 
Location: Type 0.73 Kardashev
11,110 posts, read 9,804,566 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by damba View Post
FWIW, my in-laws from Poland survived both invasions. They commented that as bad as it was to be taken over by Hitler's evil soldiers, the Russian (communist) occupation was far worse. The psychological warfare used to wipe out formerly 'free' aspects of society, stamp out religious and cultural practices, made life hellish in a different way, longer term.
The roughly 6 million Poles who died under the Nazi occupation might have a different take on the whole 'it was far worse under the Russians' take.

This is, of course, not to say that the Soviets didn't kill significant numbers of Poles. Varying estimates hold that between 1939 and 1941, and again from 1944 to 1946, between 150,000 and 500,000 Poles were liquidated by Soviet occupiers. A horrific number... but still less than 1/10th those systematically killed off by the Nazis during a roughly equal period of occupation (mid-1941 to mid-1944/early 1945). Through 1948, millions of Poles were persecuted by the Soviets, with as many as another half a million perishing. After 1948 through the end of the Cold War, the number of Poles executed by the communist regime in Warsaw, which can certainly be seen as an pawn of Soviet communism, probably numbers between 20k and 50k.

Those are absolute atrocities. But the question wasn't "Were the communists bad?" but "Why are the communists seen as worse than the Nazis?". And this pretty much sums it up. In three years, the Nazis killed around 6 million Poles. The number was high because the Nazi intent was genocide. They murdered anyone remotely seen as a threat, and enslaved millions with the intent of extracting as much useful labor from them as possible before the work killed them - a win-win from the Nazi point of view. Conversely, the Soviets in over four decades of opportunity - when they were mostly undistracted by a major war, and thus in a position to undertake genocide had they so chosen to do so - killed less than 1/5th the number of Poles killed by the Nazis in three short years. Poland served a purpose, as a buffer state and as a partner in the effort to spread communism around the globe. This speaks to a fundamental difference between Marxism and Naziism - the latter was about Germans at the expense of everyone else, while the former officially embraced internationalism and held all ethnicities as equals. In reality, of course, there was a healthy dose of Russian chauvinism in the USSR, but that bias was nowhere near the ethnic superiority of Naziism.

At the Nazi's rate of killing 2 million Poles per year, the Polish nation wouldn't have persisted to see 1970. But under communist rule, the population of Poland grew from 24 million in 1946 to 38 million by the end of the Cold War. This is hardly because the Soviet communists were benevolent and nurturing of the Polish nation, but it was certainly because they weren't trying to annihilate the Polish nation in its entirety.
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Old 05-04-2017, 10:35 AM
 
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any system of govt that has to build a wall to prevent it's citizens from fleeing is despicable !
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Old 05-04-2017, 10:36 AM
 
1,473 posts, read 1,328,015 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ariete View Post
BS. It's the contrary.The "URRS", known in English as the "USSR", had no propaganda ministry but the Anglo-Saxon culture spread almost worldwide. Here's a good example: why do some young people in Spain or Finland celebrate halloween, though it's neither a festivity in Catholic or Protestant culture? Because of Americans.


Do we celebrate the New Year on 6 January or whatever the russkie calendar celebrates it? No.


Not referring to marketing, but to propaganda directed at papers, media, billions.
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Old 05-04-2017, 12:16 PM
 
Location: The High Desert
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Both were just awful. I think the notion of a super race of German blonds is a harder concept to accept than a world based on the ideology of workers running the show. The theories failed in practice and became extreme and abusive dictatorships. The Nazis decided they wanted to take over the world based mostly on greed. The communists -- actually Soviets -- essentially became paranoid and tried to absorb their neighbors. Modern China is mostly China 2.0 regardless of the ideology. Communism/Marxism spread to Cuba and a few places but primarily morphed into one-man personality dictatorships. It's all ugly.


Americanism, democracy, Capitalism, British Empire, English common Law, puritanism/Protestantism, and private ownership is sort of mushed together as a counter force. I'm not saying this is without flaws or terrible extremes but, in practice, it works better than the other two.
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Old 05-04-2017, 12:58 PM
 
Location: Gila County Arizona
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Reason one.... Ignorance...

Reason number two... Bernie Sanders seems like a really "nice guy".
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Old 05-04-2017, 02:18 PM
 
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Probably because the ideology of Nazism was to exterminate or enslave any non-Aryan peoples, for the benefit of Aryans. Communism was a "worker's paradise" ideology, that all would contribute and share in the benefits of a communist society. It wasn't an inherently evil ideology - just that it is human nature to grab for power and control others. All communist societies, other than the kibbutzim in Israel, almost immediately devolved into autocratic kleptocracies, usually enormous prisons with closed borders to prevent people from fleeing.

Now we have a third of the world ascribing to a religious ideology which, like Nazism, tells its adherents that not only do they deserve to rule the world, but God wants them to rule the world. Non-believers are to be either executed or enslaved. The only real difference is that non-Aryans couldn't join the Nazis. Anyone can join this religious ideology - all you have to do is join Islam.
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Old 05-04-2017, 02:41 PM
 
Location: Finland
24,128 posts, read 24,792,350 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karstic View Post
Not referring to marketing, but to propaganda directed at papers, media, billions.

What is this propaganda? Capitalism or liberalism who both were "invented" in Europe?


Or is the reason that Francoist Spain lost and you cannot accept that or that the world has changed?
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Old 05-04-2017, 04:01 PM
 
2,129 posts, read 1,775,175 times
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In the first place, there has never been a truly communist government. The USSR was not communist - sure membership in the communist party was required, but communism literally means every thing is held in common by everyone. In the USSR, everything was owned by the state. That's more socialism in some senses, but in reality the USSR teetered along for over 100 years under a weird mixture of oligarchy, dictatorship, and fascism depending on who was currently in power.

Remember, USSR stands for United Soviet Socialist Republic. Communism didn't really enter into it. Communism is an economic system, not a system of government. Early Xtian communities were communistic in nature.

Communism in its strictest form is IMNSHO THE best economic system - if only human beings weren't so greedy, rapacious, and selfish. And all of that is what makes capitalism such a terrible economic system. There doesn't seem to be a good economic system that doesn't end up benefiting the least ethical and moral among us more than the rest of us.

Anyway. There is nothing evil or immoral about communism. There isn't anything evil or immoral about socialism, per se, either.

Stalin, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
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