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Comment by Asbostos | Hacker News Reader

All histories of wars that are still in living memory or close are going to be grossly distorted because people want to hear stories that pander to their own emotions.

As a prime example, historians are often legally (and certainly professionally) forbidden from freely studying some aspects of WWII in case the come to conclusions that are still politically sensitive. I'm talking here about the Nazi concentration camps. This is a research no-go-zone where only the officially sanctioned results are allowed to be published and people can go to prison in many European countries for making false or unpopular claims about 80 year old history.

Then there's the opposite problem in Japan where the official and popular history paints them as the good guys and hides from their killing 10's of millions of Chinese. Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia.

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I know that Nazi imagery has been banned in Germany, but I've not heard of professional historians being legally bound to avoid research into the topic of concentration camps, on threat of imprisonment no less. Do you have a source for this?

Edit: Have hit comment limit, so replying to AC__ here

I've been through all the sections in your link, and a total of 3 people have seen prison time. The only one that could be called a professional historian would be James Keegstra, who wasn't convicted on holocaust denial per se, but due to violating hate-speech laws by teaching his high school history class: "During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy.". Keegstra was convicted in Canada.

Ernst Zündel was convicted in Canada and Germany under hate speech laws. Having had a look at his website, it's about politicking his views, not history. But he's been in and out of court for decades on hate speech violations.

David Irving could theoretically be called a professional historian, if it wasn't proven that he used known fabricated documents as source - during the libel case he brought against someone else. Irving was convicted in Austria.

None of the above are professional or dispassionate historians taking the topic seriously. All of them are politicking.

It is more that such a historian would be immediately shunned and made into a "hack". That puts a limit on how far you can go, regardless of whether or not there's a "legal bound".

There have been a number of individuals charged around the world, as well as various academics blacklisted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#History_and_d...

I dislike that this is getting downvoted. While the claim is certainly debatable, the comment itself is civil, grammatical, links to a non-crank source which is indisputably relevant to the claim, and appears to be made in good faith.

You can't publish holocaust denial material. That means if you find a new discovery that seems to challenge the legally sanctioned story, you can be breaking the law by publishing it. I don't think that politicians should decide what research is "right" and what is "wrong". This is completely against the American concept of free speech.

Austrian law seems quite clear on holocaust denial being a crime:

§ 3g. He who operates in a manner characterized other than that in § § 3a – 3f will be punished (revitalising of the NSDAP or identification with), with imprisonment from one to up to ten years, and in cases of particularly dangerous suspects or activity, be punished with up to twenty years' imprisonment.

§ 3h. As an amendment to § 3 g., whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...]

Imagine if he US criminalized downplaying the crimes of the Vietnamese Communists or any other group the government decided was "bad". This should be a matter for public discourse, not an imposed official history.

The Austrian law you're quoting isn't a law sitting all by itself. It's part of a law saying "No Nazis, and no bullshitting about what they did"[1]. If you look at your own quote, you'll see it says "grossly plays down". The scale of the Holocaust was large - there was a heap of physical evidence, and tens of thousands of eyewitnesses. And it's not a topic that has had little research - to characterise the story of the holocaust as springing forth from the mouths of politicians is grossly misleading.

Denying the holocaust altogether is not research - it's an attempt to stifle research for political gains. It moves the needle from 'what actually happened' to 'did it happen at all', wasting resources - the same needle-moving tactics are seen in intelligent-design and anti-climate-change arguments, stopping productive conversation on a topic to further a political goal.

Finally, note that these laws limiting freedom of speech around holocaust denial are particular to that topic and nazism. The 'slippery slope' argument hasn't taken hold; it's not these laws that are limiting freedom of speech (hell, even with "the American concept of free speech" you still have Free Speech Zones, National Security Letters, and copyright that lasts for author's life + 70 years). The laws don't stop you from doing research into the shitty things the Allies did. They don't stop you researching Nazism in general or the Holocaust in particular. They only stop you playing politics from pretending that something does't exist when it has tens of thousands of eye-witnesses, troves of physical evidence, and heavy existing research on the topic.

Europe has a problem with violent nationalism; cutting off this particular avenue helps alleviate that, and doesn't do harm in return. These laws make Nazism (and it's trappings) less able to be used politically, something Europe is serious about - see Merkel's recent chiding of Netanyahu for him claiming that it was Palestinians who started the holocaust. How often do you see a head of government declare "Those atrocities, they're on us, not anyone else"?

[1]https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev... (does not have section 3h, added in '92)

Many countries have problems with violent political extremism of different sorts. When they outlaw free speech for supporters of those ideas, we call them violators of human rights. When China locks up dissidents because they spread anti-government messages, we say it's bad. But Germany and Austria do the same.

Would you really be happy if the US outlawed climate change denial and intelligent design? It's one thing to not like them but a massive step to imprison people for talking about them.

If intelligent design itself was responsible for drawing a demographic from all across a continent and destroying an estimated 6 million of them in an attempt to exterminate them completely, and was associated with a larger movement that was ultimately responsible for the deaths of 50 million people, then yes, I wouldn't have a problem with outlawing it to prevent a resurgence.

> But Germany and Austria do the same.

Yeah, one each according to that WP link. Irving was imprisoned for all of 13 months in Austria. Compare to the recent HN article on Rikers Island in New York where 400 people have been imprisoned for more than two years without being charged, and suddenly the extremly low conviction numbers of these "political dissidents" comes into focus.

Also, classing holocaust denial as 'anti-government messages' is a pretty gross mischaracterisation.

Seperatist muslims in Xinjang, anti-government rebels in Egypt or Nazi sympathisers in countryside Germany. They're all people sharing ideas that can lead them to violence. It's not reasonable to pick one of them and class it as "truly worth suppressing their speech" while accusing governments which suppress the others of violating human rights.

Intelligent Design did kill millions of people native to the Americas.

Also, this: http://imgur.com/hQ9Lyey

> Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia.

We may feel bad with access to the information we have now, but, in interviews with people from that time, it's not so clear cut.

First, very few people really understood what a nuclear bomb was or could do. We're used to instantaneous communication. I seriously doubt we even had pictures in the US of Hiroshima before the Nagasaki bomb dropped.

Second, the US suffered terrible casualties in trying to retake Japanese islands before the bombs. Any effort to avoid that was welcome.

Third, people in the US were VERY tired of war. Anything which could bring that to a close sooner would be welcomed.

Fourth, the average person in both the US and Japan had no idea what the leaders were talking about or knew.

There are lots of What-If's? for not dropping the atomic bombs. However, there are just as many the other direction. One could just as easily point out that the hardline faction in Japan might have attempted a coup without the example of the devastation that the bombs caused and that it was the bombs that allowed the emperor to surrender.

Another angle is that in hindsight, it was probably a good thing that nuclear weapons were first used in their infancy. Fast forward a decade or two to the depths of the cold war - a lack of knowledge about the actual effects of bombs on cities might have made a larger exchange between the superpowers more likely.

> One could just as easily point out that the hardline faction in Japan might have attempted a coup without the example of the devastation that the bombs caused and that it was the bombs that allowed the emperor to surrender.

The hardline faction attempted a coup even with the example of the bombs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_m...

I find irony in how you criticize Japan for painting themselves as the good guys. And in the very next sentence, you paint Americans as the good guys.

You are proof that people want to hear stories that pander to their emotions.

Unless, of course, there actually were good guys and bad guys in that war.

As far as real-world wars go, within the constraints of the real world where nobody is ever purely good or purely evil, World War 2 is about as close as we're ever going to get to a good guys vs bad guys war.

Sure, my idea of good guys and bad guys might be wrong. And so might the idea that Nazis were bad guys and allies were good guys. This is the same concept that we choose the history we want to believe, myself included.

You could even make the argument that the allies should not have resisted the Nazi invasions of Europe/Russia because the cost in lives ended up greater than what might have happened if they'd easily taken control. Though we can't know that "what if" scenario, we can at least try not to fool ourselves too much by assuming it would be unimaginable worse forever.

> Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia.

That's definitely a claim I would need to see substantial evidence for. The traditional defenses of the nuclear bombings that I have heard could not be more unconvincing.

I found your last sentence hard to parse. Are you saying that all of the justifications you've heard for the bombing were absolutely unconvincing?

I have strong feelings both ways, but I find it hard to deny that it probably saved a lot of allied lives. It doesn't mean that it was the "right" choice, but I don't see how it can be possibly dismissed (put yourself in Truman's shoes).

> I find it hard to deny that it probably saved a lot of allied lives.

That's true if the Japanese would have fought a land invasion tooth and nail for every inch of ground, civilians charging at GIs with kitchen knives, etc, etc. That's what the Western propaganda of the time predicted; East Asians in general and the Japanese in particular were broadly understood as hive-mind insects yearning to sacrifice their lives and families for the glory of the nation.

The reality is considerably more doubtful, especially now that we know about the government factions that were desperately eager to surrender even before the A-bombs fell. And even if we discount that, there's no excuses made for why the nuclear show of force had to be targeted against civilians, nor why the second bomb was dropped only three days later.

Humm...we might have to agree to disagree.

For me, there's a fuzzy line where enough time has passed that actions need to be judged based on what was known, or should have been known, at the time.

The question for me isn't: Did it actually save lives.

The question for me is: Did Truman and Churchill really believe they were saving millions of lives (and, was that a reasonable belief). Which really comes down to: do you believe Truman and Churchill?

My parent said (if I understood correctly) that all the justifications he or she has heard "could not be more unconvincing." That you and I are now talking about how many lives did it really save?, does not change the fact that saving American ( / allied ) lives, is not a wholly unjustifiable (or incomprehensible) thing for a US President to consider. Maybe I was just put off my his or her hyperbole.

OP1: >> "...the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia."

OP2: >> "...saved a lot of allied lives..."

The atomic bombings of Japan had nothing to do with the military campaign in the Pacific theater, which by 1945 had been decisively and indisputably won by the Americans. They had literally run out of targets to bomb in the Japanese home islands. [0-1] An argument could be made that the Atomic bombings saved some American lives by accelerating VJ day and thereby precluding some unpleasant island-hopping, though I've never been terribly convinced.

The atomic bombs were about scaring the Soviets, plain and simple. By '45 the American military was perfectly aware that it had won the Pacific, would soon win the European theater, and had long since turned its attention to preparing for the cold war and plundering German technology and other assets.

[0] See for example Sec. of War Henry Stimson's diary and papers, which are excerpted here among other places: http://www.doug-long.com/stimson5.htm It might help to command-F down to this quote: "I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon [the atomic bomb] would not have a fair background to show its strength."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Attacks_on_...

Indeed, I mean that the justifications I have heard for the bombing are unconvincing. That includes the claim that it "saved a lot of allied lives." Not only do I doubt that it did save a lot of allied lives, I also don't believe that this would be a sufficient justification for the bombings.

Holocaust denialism does not constitute "research."

Denying any claim, however small, about the Holocaust is not "Holocaust denial" in the sense you're using the term.

Neither is it true that "any claim, however small, about the Holocaust" is "a research no-go-zone where only the officially sanctioned results are allowed to be published and people can go to prison in many European countries for making false or unpopular claims"

I did not claim and do not believe that those two claims are equivalent.

The German law says so. Perhaps they don't enforce it much but it's still the law:

" Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine."

[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#... ]

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