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Comment by bdunbar | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think its fair to sort combatants into 'good/bad camps'.

What's fair got to do with it? If there was ever a good/bad distinction between combatants, World War II was it.

The Axis powers were evil, don't doubt it.

History is written by the winners. The Nazis as an organization committed atrocities, yes, and their leadership was responsible for that. To the millions of boots on the ground - in battles, not the relatively small number implicated in concentration camps - there wasn't good/evil. There were people we should shoot, and people we shouldn't. Blurring that line with tricks like those described puts non-combatants at risk, which is pretty evil.

Dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian population is also pretty evil.

Exactly, and tee blurring or lines is easier to spot when you leave te US and UK out of it (despite their frequent abuses of human rights). What about French Vichy actions? Russian? And countless other more minor countries. Don't get me wrong, the worst side lost, but that didn't come without controversial and wrong behavior. Thhe non political NGO aid organizations chose to be independent, and involving them causes the potential for far reaching harm, without their consent.

> History is written by the winners.

Overused cliche line that doesn't mean anything and isn't true. The Soviets won World War 2, they won it more than the USA won World War 2 and more than the British or anybody else won World War 2 but we re-wrote their history as evil scumbags who committed atrocities during the war.

> we re-wrote their history as evil scumbags who committed atrocities during the war.

Re-writing was not needed. Stalin was an evil thug, just as bad in minor ways as Hitler.

News of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940[0] by the Soviet Union was hushed up by the Western Allies during the various 3-body conferences. It only came out after the war and when Cold War tension rose[1]

Contrast this to when Dachau was liberated, where the western media were given an official tour and relayed pictures, stories and the news only days later.

Eisenhower sent out a press release when Dachau was liberated[2], but kept quiet about Soviet atrocities.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/katyn-massacre-hush...

[2] http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/dachau/dachau-01.html

don't forget internment camps

I don't know about that. The nazi leadership was evil, sure, but that doesn't automatically spread to their political allies.

This is a genuine question not a troll - which allies of Germany behaved in a generally ok manner. Maybe using the western allies as a benchmark. I struggle to think of any who didn't participate in the holocaust or similar such atrocities.

Finland had to ally in the Continuation War with German since Soviet Union was a bigger threat and obviously Allied forces / UN were not there to help. Although in the end, German wasn't that much help either.

However Finland didn't participate in any anti-Jewish or other Nazi regimen requests and didn't sign the Tripartite Pact which all the other Axis countries did.

When there are two sides, you need to choose the least worst but it doesn't mean you're like your allies.

Thanks for that - I thought long and hard and missed Finland. That was a fascinating little bit of politics that went on there - and now I'm off to read more on it.

The list is rather short for Germany's allies, with Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

Aside from Finland already mentioned, there is Thailand, Iraq and San Marino, who allied with Germany, but did not sign the Tripartite Pact. San Marino declared war on the Allies in 1940, but the Allies didn't declare back. These four were generally not considered that bad in terms of atrocities.

There were other countries aligned with Germany, though that was the result of being puppet-states.

Ignoring Italy - the slow little brother of the Axis Powers - the Japanese were fully as evil as the Nazis.

Italy under the fascists still did a pretty good job of shipping Jews off to concentration camps.

Interestingly in Hungary the 'Arrow cross' party was the local fascist party in power and they were pretty horrible as well - the history about how the arrow cross higher-ups switched straight across from fascism to communism after the war is very interesting and well worth a read for anyone into history.. To a certain extent it was the same organisation in different clothing

I'll have to catch up on modern asian history.

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