German atrocities in WWII, systematic or just like everyone else?

[Mr. Harley]

Exactly (concerning the disease), but from what I understand, and this is a vague memory a essentially a foot note in a history text I read years ago (over a decade) but wasn't there something about that famous woodcut showing the slaughter, and it caused some sort of reaction in Europe, indicating that even by the standards of the time that was considered pretty horrific (and stupid). If anybody knows the reference, I'd be interested.

While I agree that while disease did the greater part of the dirty work, it made no difference in this case. The Spaniards were going to cut the hands off of every living male! Intent, folks, intent, just as vicious as the Nazis or IJA. Disease made it easier for them to accomplish, and without it, given the technology of the time, they might not have even succeeded. But they were blood thirsty, vicious sociopaths that lot.

[East Street Trader]

None of the cases cited come even remotely close to sharing the characteristics of the Holocaust.

That is best illustrated by taking any one of the cases, putting it side by side with the Holocaust and asking what points of similarity exist. In most of the cases there may be a similarity in the level of brutality exhibited by those involved or of numbers. But that is all.

I will illustrate the difference in one other way. The way that has haunted people of my generation and the generation which came before us.

Ask yourself in each case whether you have any understanding of how the horror, whatever it is, could have happened. Perhaps it demonstrates me to have some decent measure of brutality in me but I have no real problem in understanding how the immigrants to the US could come to wipe out nearly all the indiginous population, nor why Serb has killed Croat and Croat, Serb down through a long age. Nor how a conqueror from the Japanese cultural background would employ prisoners of war or the population of a conquered nation in slave labour camps - caring little that lots died. Nor why the members of the Golden Horde raped, pillaged and murdered on a huge scale.

But when I turn to the Holocaust this understanding fails me. Easy to understand why such a one as Hitler could conceive of the Final Solution and to plan it. Easy enough (just) to understand why the disgusting cronies that he gathered around himself on his rise to power would go along with it. But it took a concerted effort on the part of far, far more people than that, and the compacency of an entire nation, for these bizarre and hideous plans to be put into effect.

I know German people, lived in Germany for five years as a child, have read German novels and histories, heard German music. My grandfather fought the Germans through a long war and my father followed suit. My father spent long years under the guard of Germans in a prisoner of war camp.

They are not a brutal people and they do not have a weird Japanese style culture.

Yes Hitler started them down the road to acquire one - with his silly Superman idea and his Hitler Youth. But those things were just green shoots in Germany which would have taken several generations to take firm hold.

It just defies belief that the people who courageously and honourably fought my grandfather, courageously and honourably fought my father, exposed to the cultural influences which are there plainly to be seen would have ever thought that what was done was anything but the abomination which it plainly is.

And yet as far as I know you can number the voices which spoke against it on the fingers of one hand. And the numbers who actively and energetically helped the thing along outnumbers a thousandfold those few, like Shindler, who did their covert bit to undermine it from within.

Add to this just a smidgeon of puzzlemnent at how quietly the victims seem to have gone to their deaths and the whole thing is just horribly dispiriting.

Because you get to the conclusion that, wholly unlike the Golden Horde or the actions of the Japanese, these sort of things could apparently happen anywhere at all.

In England, in France, In Canada or the US, in Africa, Asia or Australia. Anywhere where some mad politician could so entrench himself in power that honest, well meaning folk are cowed and too scared to speak out however appalling the things they are called upon to participate in might be.

And that, if true, is just demeaning. Of all of us.

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Exactly (concerning the disease), but from what I understand, and this is a vague memory a essentially a foot note in a history text I read years ago (over a decade) but wasn't there something about that famous woodcut showing the slaughter, and it caused some sort of reaction in Europe, indicating that even by the standards of the time that was considered pretty horrific (and stupid). If anybody knows the reference, I'd be interested.

While I agree that while disease did the greater part of the dirty work, it made no difference in this case. The Spaniards were going to cut the hands off of every living male! Intent, folks, intent, just as vicious as the Nazis or IJA. Disease made it easier for them to accomplish, and without it, given the technology of the time, they might not have even succeeded. But they were blood thirsty, vicious sociopaths that lot.

Yes, it's was horrible but I doubt it was horrible by the standards of the time, because as far as I know, the main reaction come from inside Spain and not from other countries. Although the laws weren't obey, the Spanish in the XVI century made some of the most humanitarian laws about indians.

[Patroklos]

To Tingkai,

You keep asking for examples, I keep giving them. Find me a source that has as mouch respect as these ones, that says what you want.

The Fall of Berlin 1945
by Antony Beevor
Viking Press, Hardcover - 512 pages (May 2002)

You can actually read any book on WWII that has accounts of tactical level combat with a Waffen SS unit to find acts of bravery, fair play, or chivalry. This happens to be the one I am reading at the moment and it is chalk full of it. I mentioned the circumstances above, but well, you predictably ignored it. This is the author that also wrote "Stalingrad," so if you wish to attack the author go ahead and break yourself on that one. But, like I said, just becasue there are individual acts of goodness on the behalf of the Waffen SS, their overall reputation is derervedly black.




Death by Government
R. J. Rummel

More than 8,200 estimates from 1,000 sources to document findings. Historical sketches of the four regimes that have committed the most democide -- one million or more people [from a review]

We all know the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. Most American do NOT know that the ten worst totalitarian governments murdered more than 136 million OTHER people during the 20th century. The following is a list of the ten governments responsible for all those deaths.

"(* = about 2 million MURDERS)

Soviet Gulag (1917-87)
-Executions during collectivization, etc.
61,911,000
* ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Communist Chinese State (1949-87)
-Executions of landlords, peasants, etc.
35,236,000
** ***** ***** *****

Nazi State (1933-45)
-6 mil Jews, 5 mil Poles, 10 mil others
20,946,000
***** *****

Chinese Nationalist (1928-49)
-Purges of communists, etc.
10,214,000
*****

Japan's military (1936-45)
-Nanking massacre, etc.
5,964,000
***

Khmer Rouge (1975-79)
-Khmer Rouge kill 1/3 of Cambodians
2,035,000
*

Turkey's Young Turks (1909-18)
-Slaughter of Turkey's Armenians
1,883,000
*

N. Vietnamese (1945-1987)
-S Vietnam's democide = 90,000.
1.670,000
*

Poland killed ethnic Germans
-8 million fled Poland (1945-1948)
1,585,000
*

West Pakistan (1958-87)
-E. Pakistan Hindus killed or expelled
1,503,000
*
TOTAL # Murdered = 142,000,000+"

And again since you can't seem to find your sources, I make sure you can find this one.

Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. Don't know city: Transaction Pub, 1997.

There are these big building in most cities, full of books you have obviously failed to read. If you take that line of information above to the nice lady at the desk, she will find it for you, and maybe give you a piece of candy. There are no pictures and the letters are small, but try to struggle through it so you can stop sounding like a fool

-Pat

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
It is nonsense to say that there is any other example in human history of groups of people running into millions having been rounded up, taken to places designed for the purpose and there exterminated.

Actually there is an example- the genocide of Turkish Armenians. There were massed forced migrations into the Syrian desert with the intention of starving the Armenians to death en masse. Such starvation was probably the biggest killer in that action.

The death toll of this genocide is often given as 1.5 million- but only if restricted to Armenians in the "Young Turk" era. Extend the timescale on to 1925 and include Assyrians, Anatolians and ethnic Greeks and you're looking closer to 3 million. It's the great forgotten genocide of the 20th century.

[Ecthy]

how about make a filth of the best genocidists?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I can't render genocide funny.

[Ecthy]

but the fate of the people of Paraguay you can?

[Hurricane]

I fully agree with East Street Trader's post. What makes the Holocaust special is not some undefined "more systematic" reason, but that ordinary, civilized, western European people, i.e. someone who we easily can identify us with, so easily committed mass murder.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning. The new pocket version also includes a very well-written and lengthy critisism on Daniel Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". A must-read to for anybody interested in how perfecty normal people became mass-murderers.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Patroklos
To Tingkai,

You keep asking for examples, I keep giving them. Find me a source that has as mouch respect as these ones, that says what you want.

Soviet Gulag (1917-87)
-Executions during collectivization, etc.
61,911,000
* ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. Don't know city: Transaction Pub, 1997.



-Pat

Uh, this is a gross simplification- for a better breakdown of the figures see S. Maksudov, 'Losses Suffered by the Population of the U.S.S.R., 1918-1958' in 'The Samizadat Register' ed. R. Medvedyev,publ. London, 1981, also M. Ellmann, S. Maksudov, 'Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: a note', Europe-Asia Studies vol. 46, no.4 (1994) pp. 671-80*

The Civil War and Volga Famine: 1918-22:

minimum 3 million dead, maximum 5 million

Political repression in 1920s:

unknown- tens of thousands

Forced collectivization and dekulakization post-1929:

minimum 10 million, maximum 14 million

Ukrainian Terror/Famine, 1932-3:

minimum 6 million, maximum 7 million

Great Terror, 1934-9 and Stalin's Purges:

1 million

Deportations to the Gulag, to 1937:

10 million

Shootings and random executions, 1937-39:

1 million

Deportations from Eastern Poland, Baltic States, and Romania, 1939-40:

2 million

Foreign P.O.W.s, Poles, Finns, Germans, Romanians, Japanese:

1 million

Deportations to the Gulag, 1939-45:

7 million

Deportations/exile of nationalities, Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars:

1 million

Post WWII screening of repatriates and inhabitants of ex-occupied territory:

minimum 5 million, maximum 6 million.

(* Several categories overlap)

Which gives a gross total (median estimate) of 54 million.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

That was different. The Paraguayans never stopped fighting- that was the problem.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Any survey of history will force you to arrive at the conclusion that the Nazi massacres were par for the course. Yes, they were more systematic than others, but welcome to the modern age where computers and other information technology made such systems possible. IBM provided state-of-he-art technology for cataloging the butchering.

Acknowledging that the Nazi holocaust wasn't so extraordinary in relation to the world's history of bloodshed in no way diminishes the horror of the crimes. It should, rather, cast a damning eye on humanity on a whole and all the societies (which amounts to every civilization) that has committed such nightmarish acts.

What it shows is that the Europeans are downright uncivilized compared to, for example, the Chinese and Japanese or even us Americans.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Hurricane
I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning. The new pocket version also includes a very well-written and lengthy critisism on Daniel Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". A must-read to for anybody interested in how perfecty normal people became mass-murderers.

Indeed a very good book

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ned
What it shows is that the Europeans are downright uncivilized compared to, for example, the Chinese and Japanese or even us Americans.

Lame troll.

Communist Chinese State (1949-87)
-Executions of landlords, peasants, etc.
35,236,000

Japan's military (1936-45)
-Nanking massacre, etc.
5,964,000

And Americans, of course, have our own atrocities of slavery and Native American genocide. So nobody's **** doesn't stink, as much as you may try to spread the lye.

[Patroklos]

It was a simplified view of the numbers, you are correct, as I was comparing totals from all of the modern words great killers. The means between them all instances change but like I said before, killing innocent people is killing innocent people. Wasn't the point of the post.

In referance to some of the failed economic plans that have been mentioned, I would like you to imagine what would happen if Bush implemented a 5 year plan that killed 10 million people. Do you think most would blame Bush? Do you think that blame would pass on the the Republican party as a whole? Now imagine if that plan was so ludacris that everyone knew it would kill millions, but you forged ahead anyways for some ideological utopia you dream of (acceptable losses for utopia right)? The only differance between that and other mass murder is the methods, the ends remaint he same. It isn't an excuse for the Soviets or Communist Chinese.