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why it is that "advanced" civilizations succumb to such barbarity.
How could it be that a nation as sophisticated, educated and as intellectual as Germany could fall so far and so hard to the whims of a complete moral and social mutant....and his hoards of sycophant followers....What happened?
And Russia herself....What happened? The country was on its way toward more progressive more modern lifestyle....her people produced endless art and music...and yet...they fell to crazed violent mutants that plunged the country in to darkness for almost 80 years....tens of millions murdered....
How could this happen?
One clue to it that is peculiarly relevant to Germany and Russia is simply to look at their propaganda, all of it designed to demonize the other. Hitler used Lenin and Stalin's crimes to justify his own. Stalin used Hitler's crimes for the same propaganda fodder. It didn't occur to enough people (or they didn't have the power to do anything to stop it) that because your enemy is evil, that does not make you good. Not many Americans seem to comprehend that, but it's the critical point we have to realize if we ever want to rise above our bloody tribal past and create something better.
Bring back the good old days. The insistence of people like you, dedicating their lives to crushing communism, opened the door for anti-communists like Hitler to run free. It's amazing how blind and zealous people can be if charismatic madmen work hard enough at convincing them communism was evil incarnate. That's funny---that's exactly what this thread is about---how easy it is to get people to hate.
Communism was not evil incarnate; nothing is. Melodramatic cliches like evil incarnate are part of the problem, no matter who is employing them.
But until we accept that not only was communism as evil as fascism, but that fascism can only be understood as a reaction to communism, we are not going to get very far in understanding either one.
Everyone likes scapegoats to justify their own sick crimes. Hitler had Stalin, and Stalin had Hitler. Lenin had the Czar. The Czar had his own scapegoats, including the Jews. It's all pretty much circular, and it never dawns on anyone that having evil enemies does not make you good, and does not justify your own evil.
Well I can very well imagine myself as Frank Sinatra until I sing two notes and the hounds start howling outside. The fact of the matter is the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans with a good deal of help from some other European countries.
Yeah, was that being disputed by someone?
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And the American and British pilots were military actors in a conflict brought about by Germany, Italy, Japan and a few others. Allied bombings did not happen in a vacuum. They did not just occurr for the fun of it. They were reactions to the Third Reich and its allies, who were rampaging throughout the world in the name of fascism.
Nothing ever occurs "in a vacuum", including the Holocaust. People did not wake up one morning and say "I'd like to elect a certifiably crazy leader and start killing some Jews for no reason at all today." But so what? The Holocaust was a crime against humanity nevertheless, and so were the Allied genocidal bombings.
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Good grief, does this inane notion of moral equivalence ever die or do you defend the Nazis because perhaps you approve of what they did?
Last edited by Thyra; 01-09-2009 at 07:33 AM..
Reason: No Personal Attacks...Argue Your Point Without Attacking the Poster
Again, the objective of the Allied genocidal bombings was the death of civilians. We're not talking about a janitor getting killed while sweeping up at an arms dump. We're not even talking about "indiscriminate bombing" such as Hitler did in Warsaw or the Blitz. We're talking about terror bombing that is meticulously designed to annihilate entire civilian neighborhoods by fire. Yes, that was certainly as bad as anything Hitler did, and actually worse than anything Goering's Luftwaffe did.
You obviously have an agenda beyond the scope of a history forum, and I feel that no argument will change your thoughts. Particularly if you feel you need to use personal insults in your responses. But I will entertain your argument:
Genocide is defined as "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". So I have to ask what religious, ethnic, or national group the allies were attempting to destroy? Germany? Japan? Well as the victors we didn't do too good of a job did we - with Germany and Japan both surfacing as prosperous countries only a decade after the war. How do you think Jews and Slavs would have fared under a victorious Nazi government?
You fail in supporting "genocide bombing" on another point. Yes we killed many civilians, strategic bombing on cities was used by both the Allied and Axis powers. Such is the terrible nature of total war. It has nothing to do with genocide. It has everything to do with the war time environment when every machine, every factory, every effort, every man, woman, and even child was used for the war effort. It's brutal, but it was that type of war. Total War.
What's the difference? Execution of Jews in Germany, or in occupied Europe, were not part of any total war efforts. They were not fighting for the allies. Nazi's did not execute them for any strategic war purpose, but because simply they were jews. When both Germany and Japan surrendered, hostilities ceased, and in fact humanitarian aid from the allies began. That doesn't sounds like genocide to me, does it to you?
I'd say the big difference between National Socialism and Bolshevism was that (majority) Germans were happy and they embraced NS, whereas the (majority) Russians were forced at gunpoint to accept Bolshevism and they despised it.
NS cleansed Germany of Judiasm. Bolsheviks cleansed Russia of Christianity. NS represented Western Civlization, Bolsheviks desired to exterminate it.
The death toll under Communism is 100 million. How can anyone say it isn't evil? It's a bizarre theory, that takes "nature" out of the equation, and places all human history under the microscope of economics? It's patently absurd as an ideology on its face.
Lastly, NS was in many way a reaction to barbaric Bolshevism, which started before NS. In Germany, there were plenty of Communist agitators, who had paramilitary thug organizations in place. They almost overthrew Germany in 1919, before NS was formed to combat it.
NS Germany was the only country in the history of Western Civ that had the GUTS to take and try to eliminate Bolshevism. Compare that to what the USA and the West did after the Iron Curtain fell and 1/2 of Christian Europe was plunged in the Dark Ages under the USSR.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot my original reason to start posting: The Russian peasants were backwards under the Czars indeed, but they remained so under the Communists, and the vast majority of Russians today make a pittance in income each month. (The stories of the elite, rich Mercedes-driving oligarch class are a minority in the extreme).
I read some books about the Eastern Front in WW2 and the reports of how backwards the Russians were in 1942 under Bolshevism are documented, they lived in these isbas surrounding a kolkhoz, and Communism did nothing for them. They were light-years behind the civilization and standards of the NS.
You fail in supporting "genocide bombing" on another point. Yes we killed many civilians, strategic bombing on cities was used by both the Allied and Axis powers. Such is the terrible nature of total war. It has nothing to do with genocide. It has everything to do with the war time environment when every machine, every factory, every effort, every man, woman, and even child was used for the war effort. It's brutal, but it was that type of war. Total War.
I agree "genocide bombing" is not the correct term. The Allies used "terror bombing", that's the term most often used.
Hamburg, Berlin, and then Dresden were mercilessly bombed by Churchill. Churchill also bombed and destroyed historic Hanseatic cities that had no military importance which only then led to the German response and attacks on Bath, Coventry, etc.
Churchill's bombing campaign on Germany was BARBARIC and unfitting of a man who claimed to represent Western Civilzation. I also recently read a book about this idiot Churchill where the entire time England was fighting the "racist" Germans, Churchill had Ghandi imprisoned, let a famine occur in India in 1943, and was fighting Indian independence any way he could. Some "enlightened" guy. Hypocrite and idiot, Churchill was, he went to war to save Poland and he never even succeeded at that, and Europe fell under the biggest anti-Western (non-Western) mass murder in history: Stalin.
I would suggest that you apply yourself to studying the matter more diligently. You have numerous errors in your posts, for example you assign the Dresden bombing to Churchill when in fact the bombing was a combined allied effort approved by SHAEF, which was headed by Ike.
The Bolsheviks did not "cleanse" Russia of Christianity. They were secularlists who promoted a secular doctrine, but they never outlawed religion, had the guarantee of religious freedom in their Constitution, and in fact, 33 % of the population remained regular church goers.
In general you seem to be working from a base of assumptions rather than facts, agendas rather than scholarship.
But until we accept that not only was communism as evil as fascism, but that fascism can only be understood as a reaction to communism, we are not going to get very far in understanding either one.
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Is there any room here for the position that Capitalism is as evil as either Communism or Fascism? What is it about a communist totalitarian authoritarian dictator that makes him more evil than a capitalist totalitarian authoritarian dictator? The way they distribute the wealth to the few people who survive their torturers? Franco and Salazar were not evil, because they were palsy-walsy with big US corporations and welcomed US military bases?
I would suggest that you apply yourself to studying the matter more diligently. You have numerous errors in your posts, for example you assign the Dresden bombing to Churchill when in fact the bombing was a combined allied effort approved by SHAEF, which was headed by Ike.
The Bolsheviks did not "cleanse" Russia of Christianity. They were secularlists who promoted a secular doctrine, but they never outlawed religion, had the guarantee of religious freedom in their Constitution, and in fact, 33 % of the population remained regular church goers.
In general you seem to be working from a base of assumptions rather than facts, agendas rather than scholarship.
OK, a technicality about the Dresden holocaust, excuse me. That's not the real point anyway. Churchill was responsible for the mentality behind the brutal terror bombings, how's that?
The Bolsheviks hated Christianity and they decommissioned tens of thousands of orthodox churches, whitewashed their icons, turned them into stables or truck garages, etc. Come on. Nobody will ever believe that the Communists supported religion. Rapes of nuns and killings of priests led by commissars (many Jewish) are well-documented.
I can't understand only one thing about Holocaust. It seems that the massacre of Jews is somehow exclusive and more commemorated compared to other genocides. The number of killed Russians, Poles, Belorussians and even Germans was larger than that of Jews. But only Holocaust is singled out.
Stalin was not too far behind.
The Roma people as well ( Gypsies) heavy toll
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Hypocrite and idiot, Churchill was, he went to war to save Poland and he never even succeeded at that, and Europe fell under the biggest anti-Western (non-Western) mass murder in history: Stalin.
