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

[Drake Tungsten]

An authoritive guide to "Japanese Atrocities"
Next time Boris, provide sources

I love that site.

[Tingkai]

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.

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.

Well I've just read Berlin - The Downfall 1945. How in the world can you read it and concluded that the Waffen SS were "sometimes chivalrous."

Beevor clearly shows that the insanity of Nazis and their willingness to bring Germany down in flames. He cites numerous examples of the SS shooting their own people: civilians and ordinary soldiers. I cannot recall Beevor mentioning examples where the Waffen SS were chivalrous.

You claim that the Waffen SS were "sometimes chivalrous" yet refuse to provide any facts to support that claim. I challenge you to quote some examples of SS chivalry from Beevor's book.

[Alexander's Horse]

I think there are many examples of SS behaving honourably - but they are far outweighed by examples of them behaving bady.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Caesar in Gaul killed 10 million in as many year as WWII.

Spare us the crap. There weren't probably 20% of that number living in Gaul.

[Mr. Harley]

Before any of you think this cannot happen in the US, look at the lynchings from post-civil war through the 1920's. They are pretty horrific, though not a systemic genocide but a "terror", almost Stalinesque, perpetrated against American citizens.

Try listening to today's rhetoric against gays. If you think that's fringe, read the 1986 Supreme Court decision, I can't remember the name, thankfully gotten rid of last year. That was written by the most powerful people in the country.

A decade ago, while living the Buckeye portion of Ohio (south) where you have a heavy Christian fundamentalist component, I had a young lady who was a friend. I'd had to chill out after I'd gotten engaged, she wanted a menage with me and my finacee (now wife), and my finacee didn't want to share. I found it amusing, my finacee did not, so that was that.

I ran into the young lady a couple of years later, visibly upset. It seems one of the local right-wing religious types had told her that we should put your kind (the young lady was bi, with a very heavy lesbian leaning and vocally active in the gay rights movement) in camps, as in internment. I looked at her (she was a definite left-wing liberal) and asked her what she thought I would do if that happened. She replied that she thought I'd get my guns (cringe, I'm a hunter and have long arms, but that's OK) and get them out, maybe to Canada. We talked a little and I had a liberal convert to the right to bear arms .

It got me thinking, about Schindler, the sheriffs and deputies who got killed down south trying to stop lynchings, the Waffen SS commander who got restationed to Denmark after being in Russia and who was instrumental in minimizing the affects of the Holocaust on Denmark's Jews (a footnote in a book on Ribbentrop, I cannot recall his name off hand, and they still tried and convicted him on war crimes), etc. It's not surprising how many people cooperate, or do nothing because it's "safe", or that they don't want to be at risk. I think all the citations here show that ANY society can quickly devolve in that direction if basic human rights protections are subverted, or never existed.

What needs to be stressed are those individuals who DID not go along, and courageously fought back, either directly though that often gets you killed in these circumstances, or indirectly to varying degrees of affect, whether Schindler or the caucasians in the southern states helping the underground railroad. IMHO what we need to teach are children are those examples, heros and martyrs who took the right course. It is more important to set examples on the right thing to do, rather than avoiding doing the wrong thing.

[Fake Boris]

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.

It shows the level of ignorance and uncivilization you need to achieve to state such outright idiocy.

[notyoueither]

No, it shows Ned can be a troll too. Either that or just monumentally ignorant.

[Ned]

Oncle, ok, I drop the comparisons.

You will agree, will you not, that a large number of Europeans did not exhibit the highest standards of civilized conduct during WWII?

[notyoueither]

So what?

[Ned]

NYE, I was genuinely shocked by Milosevic. I thought that Europe had left that sort of barbarity behind it.

I am similarly appalled by WWII. The conduct of so many was completely uncivilized. It was not just the Germans. It was many others as well.

Why is the question we have to ask. Europe was supposed to be a civilized place. The whole of Europe was Christian and most of it lived under the rule of law and had so for hundreds of years.

I can only contrast the relatively civilized conduct of most Americans to the conduct of virtually everyone else.

I have never heard of barbarities by the Chinese on the Japanese. I assume there were incidents, but nothing more.

I also have not heard of any attrocities commited by the Italians or Indians or French.

But the Germans and many of their allies, the Russians and their allies and the British were well into mass slaughter/rape of the other's civilians.

[notyoueither]

I can only contrast the relatively civilized conduct of most Americans to the conduct of virtually everyone else.

You mean dropping Agent Orange on civilian populations was 'civilised'?

That is strange, I figured that most Euros agreed a long time ago that chemicals should not be used even on soldiers. Meanwhile some others thought it was good fun for the local populations.

The problem with throwing poo, Ned, is that there is plenty to go around for all the monkeys.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The American policy in the repression of the Phillippines post-Spanish American War, doesn't stand up to much moral scrutiny either. It seems that to liberate the Filipinos once the Spanish were defeated, they had to kill quite a lot of them.

Odd way of freeing them....

Would you rather the US let them go and then the British scooping them up a month later? It may have taken a while, but the American colony on the Phillipines always had the goal of independance after modernization as its goal. It was indeed a strange colony, where some Filipinos were in positions of greater power than some Americans in the same organizations.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Ned
NYE, I was genuinely shocked by Milosevic. I thought that Europe had left that sort of barbarity behind it.

I am similarly appalled by WWII. The conduct of so many was completely uncivilized. It was not just the Germans. It was many others as well.

Why is the question we have to ask. Europe was supposed to be a civilized place. The whole of Europe was Christian and most of it lived under the rule of law and had so for hundreds of years.

I can only contrast the relatively civilized conduct of most Americans to the conduct of virtually everyone else.

I have never heard of barbarities by the Chinese on the Japanese. I assume there were incidents, but nothing more.

I also have not heard of any attrocities commited by the Italians or Indians or French.

But the Germans and many of their allies, the Russians and their allies and the British were well into mass slaughter/rape of the other's civilians.

Finally some sanity.
I mean come on NYE. Can you even mention a time when the US ever commited even one atrocity?
And dont start bringing up "Vee et naum" like some liberal communist.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned
But the Germans and many of their allies, the Russians and their allies and the British were well into mass slaughter/rape of the other's civilians.

What in the world are you talking about?

During WWII, the British did not slaughter/rape like the Germans did. The Brits never had concentration camps akin to the German ones. The Brits did not murder POWs like the Germans and Russians did. Brit soldiers did not commit mass rapes like Russian troops did in 45. The Brits did not murder civilians for political reasons liek the Germans and the Russians.

Your comparison of the Brits to the Germans and the Russians is simply stupid.

[notyoueither]

But the Germans and many of their allies, the Russians and their allies and the British were well into mass slaughter/rape of the other's civilians.

btw, what would the response of the United States of America have been to a submarine launched missile strike on Los Angeles in 1974 have been?

Would the United States have spared humanity from certain destruction? I doubt it. I think the Americans would have reacted in a way that was all too human, just like the Germans, Russians or British.

Note, I did not say Nazi or Stalinist. The ideology and the nation should be seperated. Why the hell you are dragging the Brits into that dung heap of ideology, I have no clue. I suspect you do not either.