Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The lesson is that 60 million people died and yet all the attention is put on only one specific group of people, this thread is an example of it. The lesson should be about equality.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,161,809 times
Reputation: 8105
Part of the lesson is that ordinary people are easy to manipulate based on evolutionary drives such as tribalism and an enthusiastic acceptance of the authority of charismatic alpha leaders.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiki
.... or seizures.[1]
Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[7]
The original Simulated Shock Generator and Event Recorder, or shock box, is located in the Archives of the History of American Psychology..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Yes, that. That the next World War will do us all in. Wasn't it Einstein who said something about, "I don't know what world war three will be fought with but the one after it will be fought with sticks and stones.".
Yes, that. That the next World War will do us all in. Wasn't it Einstein who said something about, "I don't know what world war three will be fought with but the one after it will be fought with sticks and stones.".
I mean, the simple version is a crazy guy gets power, is "evil" and the good guys win. After seeing the death camps, it's easy to buy that.
But, while the man in charge was nuts, he was not so nuts as to lose. After all, he was winning for a long time both at home and abroad. He had the country doing sophisticated science, he had the manufacturers cranking out hardware, he was at the forefront of science and tech for that time.
As I understand it, he thought the bankers would pay for messing with Germans. And since the bankers were Jews, he took special measures to harm that group.
Now, if he was so smart as to come to power and march down and take over his neighbors, how could he have been so stupid? Let's say he was correct that some people had a conspiracy to destroy the labor of nations, how does the poor little Jewish girl of some small town take the fall for them?
While we might like to think we are the good guys, we didn't care- our companies helped the Germans. We knew something was going on because after all people talk. We had spies over there. We did business over there. Look at Syria this very day. There is no doubt what they did was wrong, but I find it hard to believe there was not more compelling evidence to genocide than the crazy thoughts of some guy.
Therefore, what is the lesson of Germany's defeat? That Christianity won? That Bolshevism won? That labor lost? That genocide can be committed by smart people? That the conspiracy was legit and it won?
Until we know what they were really doing, how can we know the lesson of that war?
The lesson for me is that a policy of appeasement does not work, for the US the lesson should be that a policy of thinking that what happens "over there" does not impact us here does not work.
Otherwise the rise of Nazi Germany and Hitler has a long and complex path through history. There is not one single factor that explains the origination of WW2. One other note - there was no success in Nazi Germany even before the war, their economy was on borrowed time and would have collapsed under the weight of debt. He was not "winning", he was overreaching.
But the biggest lesson was in the Pacific theather and the dropping of the atomic bomb. You don't mention that. The nuclear age changed the face of war for good. No longer would we have a war between world powers - the new face of war would be regional proxy wars.
During the mid 1930s, the Western democracies had it in their power to forcibly put a halt to Hitler's expansionist ambitions. But instead, they equivocated and appeased, and Hitler's lust for power grew stronger. Kristallnacht should have been the final straw that showed the world, once and for all, what the Nazis were about. Even then, a forceful and united response from the Western powers could have probably tempered Hitler's ambitions. But once he saw that he could get away with it, with no response except statements of disapproval, he pushed full steam ahead.
While I appreciate the tongue in cheek nature of your link, I may as well point out that Russia has been whupped a couple of times.
They were first on the scene in WW I, having been asked by the Serbians for assistance against Austria-Hungary. But in typical Russian fashion they melted down later in the war. Czar was removed, Provisional Government failed and by war's end the Russians were actually shooting each other in Russian trenches. I mean, taking aim and shooting each other!
So I guess we could consider Russia whupped in WW I, although they were aligned with the winners.
Then the Japanese handed the Ruskies their hat back when TDR was President. To your point, that wasn't a land war, but still, a whupping is a whupping.....
The Mongols didn't have much trouble with them, but then the Mongols never had much trouble with anyone. Sort of like you or me getting into the ring with Mike Tyson.
And today, The Ruskies are in deep Ka-Ka. They have lost 15 million people over the last 25 years or so due to a very low birth rate, and there is no sign that that trend is reversing. They are down to 148 million people. They ain't exactly got an immigration problem.
We all used to think the Russians had advanced weaponry until Gulf War II. That's when the USA starting lighting up Russian tanks that couldn't even see our guys, let alone hit 'em.
Tanks, submarines, aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants; they've all proved to be empty shells. Russia is just big, that's all.
FWIW: I think the nature of warfare has changed again. I don't think huge armies will ever again march against each other; Gulf War II marked the end of that era.
I think we have unfortunately entered into a very long period of non-peace/non-war. What we are seeing now will go on virtually forever.
Maybe THAT was the lesson of WW II.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
