The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking
nytimes.com
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The holocaust is only one part of it - the Japanese were brutal in unimaginable ways as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
They killed, raped, tortured, and experimented on living humans (the first time I found out what a vivisection was, I felt my stomach churn). It takes a lot of effort to make an atomic bomb seem humane, and somehow World War II manages to do it.
To the extent possible, I will never do business with you or any company you are associated with. You sound like a horrible person.
Either way, inasmuch as it helped to shorten the war, prevent American invasion, and prevent Soviet invasion the atomic bombs actually probably saved Japanese lives overall (civilian and military both).
Most notably, news of the second atomic bomb came while the Emperor Hirohito and his cabinet were meeting to discuss what to do about the first, and about the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Even though they received the news of the second bombing earlier that day the cabinet still deadlocked 2-2 on the question of whether to surrender; it was Hirohito himself who had to decide that enough was enough.
The Emperor would record his surrender announcement to be played back the next day... in the meantime elements of the Imperial Japanese Army decided to overthrow the government in order to prevent the surrender announcement from being broadcast. Two high-level officials were killed in the process, a senior Army general killed himself rather than stop the coup, and the bravery of some of the palace staff managed to keep the broadcast from falling into the hands of the conspirators.
So I'm not sure we'll ever know exactly how much the atomic bomb weighed into that, but it certainly appears to have been more than zero, even though its destructive effect was not significantly more than what was already being experienced by other Japanese cities sustaining wave upon wave of conventional bombing (which relatively few people ever seem to complain about for some reason).
The memorial, which I highly recommend, includes an audio headset which plays interviews with survivors as you walk through the pass. Their accounts are chilling though certainly not to the level of the Nanking Massacre.
I can understand the argument that dropping the bombs made japan surrender more quickly, and thus saved a lot of american soldier's lives.
Most of the people who died in the hiroshima and nagasaki were only responsible of being victims of an oppressing government and state ideology.
Furthermore there were a lot of prisoners who died as well, for example 20000 korean prisoners.
Not sure though if most of the people would find ethically acceptable to actively murder 250000 random people in order save some from cruelties.
I'm sure there can be an endless discussion about this. However, I just wanted to note how easy is overlook completely this when you think in terms of "them".
The bomb wasn't dropped on the torturers, the rapists, which in many cases were not held responsible for the crimes they committed.
I know that it sounds obvious, but this way of thinking, is the one of the reasons all this atrocities are allowed to start in the first place. By thinking of other people as inherently different from you, they can be thought of as inferior and thus you feel exempted of feeling wrong about the stuff that's being done to them.
Humanity has very long history of this behavior, actually it was more common than not (slavery etc). The thing that's peculiar about the WWII is the systematic way, the unstoppable industrial approach and the way that cold heartless "science" gave apparent purpose for nightmares to come true.
WWII helped shape the very notion of evil in our age, it's style and motivation.
This is the tricky part. I don't remember exact figures, but wasn't Truman's dilemma a choice between invading Japan or dropping the bombs? I don't really see a viable third option, and I don't remember reading about one either. The tragedy is that the Japanese were not given enough time to surrender after the first bomb was dropped.
Also, the United States has also done some terrible things "in the name of democracy," but I still think there is a difference in magnitude between installing a dictator in a foreign country and encouraging the systematic murder and rape of civilians.
The problem is that these things are on a spectrum - is it not possible to condemn both while admitting that one alternative was better? I obviously don't want anyone to use nuclear weapons, but how should we react when it is the option that results in the least amount of suffering?
And as far as saying "them" -- this was out of convenience. It is a pronoun, after all, and I was merely trying to say that elegant solutions are quite hard to find when you're dealing with ugly problems. Sometimes "less ugly" is all you can find.
The real concern was probably the Soviets. They had already invaded Manchuria and some say they had their eye on Japan.
Seems pretty evil to drop an A-bomb as a warning to someone else, but the next few decades of Soviet occupation would have sucked for the Japanese, too.
Also, it was probably a good idea to confront the morality of nuclear warfare by dropping a 20 kT bomb. Would Truman have stopped MacArthur from deploying a hundred times that much firepower in Korea, if he hadn't seen the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs for himself?
Suffice to say, your moral high ground is not as clear cut to me, especially when you talk about justifying the atom bomb.
And I'm not justifying use of the atomic bomb in every scenario, or even saying that it was the best possible outcome, but out of the options available to Truman, it appears to be the one that would have resulted in the least amount of suffering.
There has been a strong correlation between US-trained South American dictators and death squads.
http://www.laprogressive.com/school-of-the-americas-grads-be...
The US CIA and special forces supervised these kinds of tactics in the Vietnam war, with rape used for interrogation and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.
You can't actually be serious?
The firebombing of Tokyo caused more deaths, not less, than either of the atomic bombs. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo :
"The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9/10 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II;[2] greater than Dresden,[13] Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events."
> As an aside, do you really think that in a country that was in complete shambles, that any word of a bomb that had killed everyone around it, or that word of the real damage would have gotten to the emperor in the time it took them to surrender?
The Emperor knew the same day. However much of a "shambles" the Home Islands may have been in, the Japanese at least had telegraph cables, and when they stopped responding from Hiroshima, and when the outskirts of Hiroshima wired news of a horrific bomb detonation they actually sent planes over to investigate and confirm.
> The most likely reason that they surrendered was that they knew they were hooped once the Soviets finally joined the war against them on August 8th.
The U.S.S.R. declaration of war certainly caught them by surprise; but the Japanese were certainly not stupid. They knew the war was not winnable by 1943 when they lost the strategic initiative in the Pacific to the U.S.
The U.S. had the men, the Navy, and the equipment already in-theatre for the invasion. The U.S.S.R. had the men but not the naval or air forces needed to cover an amphibious invasion before the U.S. could start, so their entering the war only had a strategic impact for Manchukuo (and later, North Korea).
http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-u...
the japanese tried several times after the russians invased to surrender (before the drop)
You already mentioned the US and Japanese military deaths had we had to invade the island. It's also likely that more than 250,000 civilians would have died during that invasion. Largely different people would have died, and Truman had to "play God" but I believe that millions of lives were saved. His options sucked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Leahy#Atomic_bomb
The nukes were used not to beat the Japanese, but to intimidate the Russians, who had advanced as an industrial force as part of their fight against Germany.
But the Japanese had the chance to surrender and they didn't. Lots of second guessing now, maybe they gambled on getting better terms...
They refused to surrender after Hiroshima. They refused to surrender after the U.S.S.R. declared war. Finally after Nagasaki their cabinet deadlocked 2-2 on the decision to surrender. The Emperor himself broke the tie by deciding for peace (a decision which brought a minor coup of its own).
Adm. Leahy was correct if he was using Western logic and ideals. In fact it was clear since 1943 that Japan would be defeated and had to surrender or eventually lose the war.
He's also correct that it was of no material assistance compared to conventional weaponry. There were only so many atomic bombs available and the B-17s rampaging across Japan were certainly doing a fine job as well.
The part I don't understand is why he thought atomic bombing a city was barbarous, but firebombing Tokyo was how gentlemen conducted warfare. More Japanese died in a single firebombing raid than died in Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki.
This raid I mention occurred in March 1945 by the way, not August. In light of that it's hard to claim with a straight face that conventional weapons were forcing Japan to surrender before invasion of the Home Islands. They had every reason to surrender in March if that was their only tripwire to decide to do so.
Truman's options sucked? That's just official US propaganda. Actual history says that the Japanese were in dire condition, have had pretty much surrendered and only asked for some very inconsequential counter-demands in order to officiallly sign their surrender [1].
The US dropped the bomb anyway, and then another, because they were eager to test in on real conditions, and wanted to sent a message to the USSR as the war was coming to an end and the new era of "cold war" began.
[1] Not to mention that they were literally forced to attack the US (in Pearl Harbor) in the first place, by very careful manoeuvring of the US part, that wanted an excuse to enter the war.
I see, even Pearl Harbor wasn't really their aggression. Was the brutal torture of POW their fault or did we force them to do it?
Their brutal torture of POW and the unbelievable atrocities they did against the Chinese were THEIR (the Japanese's) fault. Their imperialistic ambitions and their treatment of Korea was also THEIR fault.
Why would you expect me to say otherwise?
I guess because then I would just be a pro-Japanese US-hater crazy guy to be easily dismissed.
Only I don't take sides, I just call it as it is (well, at least to my knowledge).
So, yes, the Japanese did awful things in the war. But dropping A-bombs on civilians was also awful, and it was not even justified because of any "he had to do it to end the war" situation.
Heck go hear the hardcore history podcast on the matter, then you will understand that it is just not that simple.
Personal revenge and punishment has already an interesting amount of counter arguments. But when we begin to lift this issue up to whole populations/ethnic groups, the thing starts to get out of control.
Collective guilt and responsibility and punishment were the same actors behind the very atrocities we were condemning and fighting.
In the hearts of many people, the Jews deserved what happened to them because they were the alleged cause of their problems and misery (and they needed an enemy, someone to blame). And it was way easier for German people to not feel empathy for all the Jewish neighbors disappearing once they thought of them as "them", as carrying a collective guilt, regardless of individuals.
So, I'm not here to discuss who is worse. But sometimes, as I struggle to understand how it's possible have had so many millions of complacent people, assisting, giving power to cruel dictators, sometimes I have a glimpse of how is this feeling, each time I happen to think "well, they deserve it".
Apparently not a lot of effort for you.
The facts that make it even stranger -- he was not Jewish and was born in Massachusetts in 1916. He apparently told them left and right he was a US citizen and they just ignored him.
Talk about beating the odds.
he was not Jewish and was born in Massachusetts in 1916. He apparently told them left and right he was a US citizen
Could he prove that he was an American or maybe Americans weren't that popular by then either?
Passports were not required back when he left the US, so I doubt he had proof handy and even if he did it was probably a fine line. Showing proof he was American could have made him a target instead of helping.
In fact, much as most design by committee systems are, the nazi regime was a bit of an incompetent mess with holes left right and centre.
If you ever meet a Jew who is willing to discuss it, they usually have a relative or two who escaped to a more friendly country.
Have you ever heard of term "survivorship bias"?
They must have really wanted it as a society and hundreds of thousands must have been involved, one way or another. That's not the work of just a few crazy fanatics.
The Brits had a tough time with the Boers, who mostly used cavalry and light artillery to conduct guerrilla raids on the British soldiers. The British solution was to round up the non-combatant Boer population and starve them until the men surrendered.
The discovery described entailed new ghettos, forced labor camps, etc. In other words, it's not about new killing centers, and as such NOT about the Holocaust in the typical sense of the word.
Do read on in the link I supplied please:
"Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living.
To describe the conditions in more detail, the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in northwestern Wyoming was a barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for food rations.[67]
Because most internees were evacuated from their West Coast homes on short notice and not told of their assigned destinations, many failed to pack appropriate clothing for Wyoming winters which often reached temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (−18 degrees Celsius). Many families were forced to simply take the "clothes on their backs."
Armed guards were posted at the camps, which were all in remote, desolate areas far from population centers."
In short: the new sites discovered were in many ways JUST like the Japanese internment camps (and vice versa), where Japanese people, often citizens of the USA, were kept against their will.
"A number of persons died or suffered for lack of medical care, and several were killed by sentries; James Wakasa, for instance, was killed at Topaz War Relocation Center, near the perimeter wire."
To compare to:
"Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.[5] Over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men."
You say:
"the new sites discovered were in many ways JUST like the Japanese internment camps"
and the article says:
"The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel."
Your sense of morality is totally broken if you can't differentiate these things.
Flexie: "They must have really wanted it as a society and hundreds of thousands must have been involved, one way or another. That's not the work of just a few crazy fanatics."
My point: terrible things were done right here, families uprooted, lives destroyed, hunger, fear, people stored in camps, in our own free country, with millions of witnesses, and yet... these crazy things happened, because society was told by those in charge that it was appropriate to do so.
Several years later we bombed 100k people to their deaths by fire (Tokyo). Tokyo was just one of 67 cities that was bombed with napalm (before we threw the nuclear stuff).
McNamara's comment on the bombing was this: LeMay said that "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." "And I think he's right," says McNamara. "He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals." . . . "LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"
Keep on believing!
The striking thing about Nazi Germany is that it happened, and that people not too different than us let it happen. If your interest in studying this stuff is thinking about how we all keep it from happening again, studying comparable events - especially ones that happened right here - is potentially important. I could elaborate but it really feels like I'm just stating the obvious.
It is only funny until you realize the likely reason that IBM's lawyers are taking that term so seriously. (You think they don't still have clients who are despotic dictators?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_t...
Has nothing at all to do with wanting to be evil; it has to do with liability and a cute, but legally-unwise license.
If the serious grumps are willing to play along and ask for an exception, then you may as well throw them a bone. In receiving such a request you've already extracted amusement from them.
If anything I think it shows peoples ability to see circumstances as normal (even if they are horribly out of whack with morals from other times) if it appears to be the prevailing wisdom of the group at the time.
I would like to think though that it was pretty much the last possible time that this could happen in history on such a large scale. Today we still have outliers like north korea but in general the world is too connected for the same effect to happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict
The sad part is that there are no clear stop to it in any time soon. It seems that as long it is a powerful enough nation/allied nation, they can do what ever crimes they like. Only once it is all over will people be look back and wonder why they let it happen.
Even somehow encouraging revolution could be dangerous, as long as the military stays intact, since one way to deal with a domestic problem is to start a foreign war against (what most of the population believe) is a serious adversary.
My evolving theory of intervention is that any militarily opposed action which can't be accomplished by a single brigade or smaller force in less than 3 months will bring more harm than good, and should only be executed in defense with all other options exhausted. Liberating the people of Equatorial Guinea or ending the MEND conflict (or destroying AQ presence in Afghanistan in 2001) probably would be a net win for humanity (and each could be accomplished by a very small force, maybe 500 + support); NK is at the extreme other end of the scale with occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
Quite frankly, the more likely prediction is that it will happen on a larger scale in a century or two.
(1) Authority. At one time, Germany was a battle ground with the children eating by thawing out frozen soldiers in the snow. One reaction was Prussia that became intensely 'militaristic'. Somehow that Prussian development spread over Germany and created an 'intensity' and a big respect for 'authority'. At best there are pros and cons with that direction, and somehow, on balance, Germany long went too far.
(2) WWI. That was a disaster. England, France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, and more suffered. Finally the US came in and broke the stalemate and ended it. Yes, the US lost, too. Among all the suffering, Germany was near the top of the list and, much of Germany had a hugely bitter reaction.
(3) Versailles. There were 'reparations'. So, Germany printed money to pay off the reparations more quickly. Then the inflation ruined the finances for much of Germany and created more bitterness.
(4) Democracy. The German efforts at democracy in the 1920s were clumsy -- more bitterness.
(5) The Great Depression. Sure, the stock market crash was in the US. So, people had borrowed from the banks to buy stocks and suddenly had no hope of paying back. So, the banks went bust. So, the economy slowed enormously. The 2008 housing crisis was similar; we did it to ourselves and didn't often enough see the disaster coming and haven't been very smart about fixing the problem, and the same song, first verse was in the 12 years after the 1929 crash. Then somehow the more developed economies were much more closely linked than one would expect. So, the US slowed down buying from Germany, and some Germans lost their jobs; they didn't buy, and more Germans lost their jobs; they didn't buy from the US, and more in the US lost their jobs; etc.
(6) Hitler. He was mad, and in particular he was mad about all the disasters that happened to Germany. And did I mention, he was mad? Determined. Ambitious. Ruthless. Can think of various 'reasons' from his relationship with his mother, with girls, his struggles in his career, his WWI experience, etc., but none of these factors has any 'predictive' power since many others with similar backgrounds didn't go nuts.
(7) Fertile Ground. Hitler found fertile ground for organizing and leading, especially leading out of work, angry, ex-WWI German soldiers. Hitler wanted to be able to speak and get his followers up on their hind legs, practiced a lot, and got good at it.
(8) German Army Politics. The German Army had some funds for political activities, liked what they saw in Hitler, and provided just enough 'seed' money to keep Hitler going in politics.
(9) Communists. In politics it usually can be helpful to have a visible enemy, and Hitler had the Communists. And they were also likely a genuine threat.
(10) Elections. By 1933 or so, Hitler had enough political followers to start to make some waves in elections. He didn't do really well, but he did stay in the game.
(11) Industry. As might be expected, German industry had some political power. Well, they thought that Hitler could help them, and Hitler no doubt was good at playing along. So, eventually Hindenburg asked Hitler to form a government.
(12) Double Down. Then Hitler and his Nazis were the government, but they still didn't have much power. Hitler called for new elections and used the power he did have to 'stuff the ballot boxes' and do better in the second election. So, he had more in the Reichstag, i.e., congress. Then there was some rough and tumble politics, i.e., before a vote in the Reichstag some of Hitler's tugs could 'arrange' that the majority they wanted was present and voting and the rest were still outside.
(13) Hindenburg Died. Then Hitler got Hindenburg's job, also, which made Hitler close to a dictator. E.g., his buddy Goering was head of the police force in Prussia. Generally his buddies were running things.
(14) Then, in the words in one of the Star Wars movies, Hitler pushed through some 'special powers' for, as I recall, 4 years, to get the economy going again. Amazingly, he actually did it. So it was roads, bridges, ships, planes, whatever. The US should have done as well over the last 4 years. Of course, it's easier to put people to work when also have thugs trash the unions and just dictate what people will get paid -- we don't do such drastic things in the US. Hitler ran what can be called a 'command economy'. Why most economies run from the center flop and his didn't, I don't know. But German industry had reason to be happy with Hitler.
(15) Progress. By 1936 and the Berlin Olympics, Hitler had Germany looking good, if didn't look too closely. There was a lot of 'authoritarianism', but Germany was 'susceptible' to that.
(16) Dictator. Then Hitler got his second term of special powers, was an absolute dictator, and the real monster started to come out. "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.". Plenty of people in Germany with good sense saw the threat, but opposing Hitler was not possible.
(17) Dreams. Hitler had 'dreams'. One of his dreams was to take over the land to the east, essentially from Germany to the Arctic, the Urals, and the Black Sea. He wanted to turn this land into 'farms' owned by Germans and with Slavs as slave labor on deliberate starvation diets. Everyone else in that land he wanted just to kill off right away.
So Hitler started making war. E.g., he took half of Poland and half of France. For war production, he would turn captured people into slaves.
(18) England. Hitler thought that he could quickly take England. But before a landing, he had to defeat the Royal Air Force -- thus started the Battle of Britain. But Hitler's air force was really just not up to the job: Both his fighter planes and his bombers had range too short. Hitler got angry and tried to bomb London, but his fighters could not provide protection as far as London, and, net, in The Battle of Britain Hitler's air force took unacceptable losses, and Hitler gave up.
(19) Russia. Hitler came close actually to capturing and holding the lands to the east he had in mind. But, he got delayed: (A) Stalin was also running a 'command economy'. So, as Hitler moved east, Stalin packed up nearly everything of value and moved it much farther east. (B) As Hitler moved east, his front grew to be too wide and his supply lines, too long. (C) Hitler planned badly for the Russian winter. (D) The Russians regrouped and pushed back against Hitler and gained time. (E) Due to events elsewhere, Hitler ran out of time, got over extended and, basically, was not able actually to win in Russia. His losses were huge.
Hitler's buddies in Japan declared war on the US, so so did Hitler, and now he was in a two front war, with the US, and on a long walk on a short pier.
Hitler was going to take North Africa, move east and take the Suez Canal and, thus, cut off oil, etc. to England, and continue to move east and take the Mideast oil for Germany, but he blew it. First, the US provided massive supplies to Monty a little west of Suez. Rommel got pushed back to the west. England broke the German code, and, thus, much of Rommel's supplies went to the bottom of the Med. Ike invaded North Africa, and Rommel went back to Germany. Hitler's efforts in North Africa were a bust.
So, Hitler had lost in England, North Africa, and Russia.
England. The US turned England into an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and the US Eighth Air Force along with the Royal Air Force started bombing anything and everything in Germany. Meanwhile the Russians were moving west. By D-Day, June 6, 1944, Hitler was unable to put much of anything into the air. The Normandy invasion was a great success, in spite of some cases of hard times, and then it was a fast charge all the way across France and into Germany. Germany was getting it from the air, from Russia from the east, and from the US, England, etc. from the west.
For the German submarines in the Atlantic, too soon for Germany the US and England looked at the maps, blimps, airplanes, radar, sonar, small aircraft carriers, etc. and from bases in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, England, etc. had fairly safe passage across the North Atlantic.
Hitler also had bought heavily into the whole 'eugenics' stuff, Darwin, the image of human breeding much like dog breeding, etc. and for that reason, his general resentment and madness, and some long 'tensions' in Europe, long a very bloody place, wanted to kill off everyone he regarded as undesirable. He did a lot, especially in Poland.
It appears that since WWII the main lessons were not lost on Germany: No more dictators, Nazis, hate speech, mass unemployment, big inflation, or militarism. A big social safety net. Work hard and smart and just do not mess up again.
Could it happen in the US? I'm too afraid it could. We have to be careful.
"(3) Versailles. There were 'reparations'. So, Germany printed money to pay off the reparations more quickly. Then the inflation ruined the finances for much of Germany and created more bitterness."
Some of the Allies were going to make the same mistake in WW2 with repartitions once again. The French wanted to take the Ruhr, the industrial heartland in Western Germany and annex it into France. Other ideas were to make Germany an agrarian society. The primary reason the US created the Marshall Plan was to ensure the reparations and the initial dismantling of the German Industry (later repealed) that were forced on Germany (mostly the taking of IP, such as patents) would not cripple it and make it fall into the hands of the Soviets[1].
"(8) German Army Politics. The German Army had some funds for political activities, liked what they saw in Hitler, and provided just enough 'seed' money to keep Hitler going in politics."
The army did sort of a bittersweet deal with Hitler. Most of the army was not fond of Hitler, but they did see him as a way to restore their faded glory. They made their "deal with the devil" though when they agreed to take an oath to Hitler in return for Hitler dismantling the SA, which the Army saw as thugs and did not want integrated into the army (who thought of themselves as principled and aristocratic). Much of the army took that oath quite serious as well due to the Prussian tradition of loyalty to their country and leader--believing that betraying the oath was to betray their country. However, elements of the military still thought Hitler was mad all the way back to 1938 and had plotted to kill Hitler[2]. However, the capitulation of the UK and France in Czechoslovakia[3] and the later invasion of Poland quieted most of the planning to assassinate Hitler for the time being.
Also anyone who has not seen them, I reccomend the BBC's Fall of Eagles[4], BBC's The Great War[5] and the BBC's World at War[6]. Watching them back to back explains quite a bit about how the 19th Century Monarchies led to WWI and how WWI led to WWII.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reparations_for_World_Wa...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Adolf_Hitler_assassination...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Eagles
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_(documentary)
Germany had some of the most talented military leadership of the time[1][2][3] and were thinking on the bleeding edge of military theory/doctrine. It was basically von Manstein's plan (that Hitler took credit for) that pushed through the Ardennes and into France. However, following the campaign in France, Hitler assumed he knew what he was doing and generally ignored the advice and plans of his generals.
Speaking of Germany's invasion of Russia, Germany would have been in a much better position to defend against the USSR if Hitler had not been pulling the strings. Paulus[4] could have broken out at Stalingrad and avoided encirclement if a competent leader (instead of Hitler) had been pulling the strings.
Hitler also stonewalled many of the bleeding edge technology programs of Germany at the time because he thought he knew better than his military. One example was the Me-262 jet fighter[5]. It was scheduled for service in 1943, but was delayed until 1944, because Hitler felt it would be better suited as a fighter-bomber. Thankfully, Hitler was incredibly vain as well as insane and thought too much of his military leadership skills.
We had many great military leaders on the side of the Allies (Patton, Bradley, Zhukov, etc) as well as overall manpower (and generally competent leadership[6] that delegated control), but the incompetence of Hitler's leadership allowed us to turn the war back to our favor after initial German Victories. In many ways, Stalin was also very much like Hitler, except much more paranoid[7] (and proved it by killing his shrink that told him he was paranoid)--a megalomaniac despot that mass murdered his people (though not as logically and coldly calculated as Germany) and thought more of his abilities than he should have. However, Stalin was smart/sane enough to know when he should let his generals do their jobs.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Guderian
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_Manstein
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Paulus
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me262
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_barbarossa#Reasons_fo...
[7] http://books.google.com/books?id=nA7YzQMzO9YC&pg=PA349&#...
I think he wouldn't even have truly entered the city once he noticed how unfavorable the conditions were to his troops. He would have crossed the Volga and starved them to surrender. That could have become a second Leningrad, but that seems unlikely as the Germans already controlled the waterways into Stalingrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Attack_on_... 1 September, the Soviets could only reinforce and supply their forces in Stalingrad by perilous crossings of the Volga under constant bombardment by artillery and aircraft")
One of their explicit goals was basically to depopulate the east and settle it with German pioneers.
Stalin, on the other hand, never lost touch with reality to the degree that the nazis did. His essay "Marxism and the problem of linguistics", written in the 40s, certainly showed that he was thinking clearly and pragmatically in his later years and hadn't fallen into the bizarre delusions that so many totalitarian dictators do. The problem with Stalin was that he was to rational. He didn't believe in gratitude, compassion or have any response at all to human suffering. He also probably though that the Nazis would behave rationally and be more strategic and instead focus on pummeling Western Europe and not attacking Russia, thus leaving it for Stalin's easy conquest.
a) The fact that by 1933, the majority of the population was voting for parties that were explicitly against the democratic system. Even if there was no majority for the Nazis, there was also no majority in defense of protection of constitutional limits on power.
b) The government bureaucracy and much of the elite (including the then President, Hindenburg, and old military man) were loyal to the State/Realm (Reich) to which they swore their oaths, but not to the democratic order and the constitution, and so were not functional impediments to Nazi power. I was also struck, when reading about their actions and motivations, how little they realized that democratic protections and limits on power protected them as well - when the Nazis took power, the conservative establishment was removed from civilian power by force or the threat of force, using powers that the conservatives had originally intended for use against the Left.
c) Once the Nazis came to power, they succeeded in instilling in the German public apathy and an unwillingness to get involved in political opposition (though not necessarily active devotion to Nazi ideology). A fanatical minority can do a lot of damage if the majority is apathetic or is distracted by more popular policies (like national greatness and revenge on the WWI Allies).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/01...
42500 sites/12 years/365 days would be an average of 9.7 sites created per day. Hrm.
But what amazes me and makes me feel the most shame about humanity is how the US and other western nations acted w.r.t. immigration and refugees during the pre-war period, and then how the victors acted after the war (large numbers of German civilians and non-nazi German POWs died after the war, too, and in the USSR, there were POWs in "prison" for a decade after). And the US Japanese-American internment, etc. Very little was said about any of this until the 1980s.
The US is the country which probably retained the most industrial/agricultural capacity and could have done more.
And thanks to modern technology, evil today is even more banal.
A relative of mine, a German civilian but not a sympathizer was employed to deliver supplies to the camps. According to him, after the war supplies were cut by the allies and people were left to starve to death. People were so hungry they were eating their clothes. Those camps by then contained both nazi and civilian prisoners mixed together as well resulting in murders, violence and factions of prisoners.
There's as much evil on both sides if you ask me. The whole thing was a complete mess from end to end.
Only the victors get to put pen to page. The victors also pretty much legislated against debating anything other than the official stories.
Note: I'm not denying anything, but some things have gone unsaid. When you're not allowed to talk, faith is required and faith is inadequate in this day and age.
Why does the US not focus on their own wrongs in history? I'm German and as a consequence as adolescent I was "forced" every year during high school to hear about Nazi Germany (in German and History courses). This is very important and shaped me as an individual and a lot of my friends. So don't get me wrong, it is important to remember and it's important to understand what happend (and to realize that it's easy to do/support similar ideologies .. most of the German people at the time were no monsters and had also support from people all over the world, who believed that Hitler was needed against Communist Russia ... This is sad to hear yet important. Also a lot of the German scientists who did abysmal things to Humans continued working for the US after the war). I believe the lessons we should draw from Nazi Germany in World War II is that it is very easy for us (for everybody) to accept inhuman behavior, racism and genocide :(
Maybe as German, I don't have the right to say that ... yet,I find it hypocrite to hear from US researchers, French, Austrians or Swiss how much we Germans did do wrong ... When part of the Austrians/French/US actively supported it and some Swiss took the money and gold from Nazi Germany and closed the borders for the victims. This is by no means meant as a justification of the crimes towards humanity my ancestors did, it's important to remember. everybody should visit Dachau or a similar concentration camp and remember not what cruelty we Germans were capable of but what cruelty we as human race are capable of.
*edit: typos
>Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
>“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”
We all know that the allies were almost oblivious to these concentration camps during the war.[1] I would be surprised to learn that the allies did not have agents, spies or informants stationed in Germany during the war. How did these people also fail to notice what - according to Dr Dean - would have been obvious?
Even 40'000+ sites takes few people to pull off in a country of over 50 millions. It was a very different time, and as the parent correctly points out, people accepted genocide, torture and blatant racism. Not just in Germany, but everywhere.
A lot of people seem to think that it is something inherently German that made the Holocaust so terrible, but truth be, any other country could have fallen victim to the same propaganda had their situation been similar.
That being said, I still find the Second World War rather uninteresting.
[1] Although, as their progressing through German held Europe moved forward, the true picture began to emerge.
If not "any other country", surely, "a lot of similarly thinking countries".
Belgium, France and Britain for example, also committed terrible atrocities and countless murders and deaths in their colonies at the same time (and even after world war 2).
I'll quote a drunk Austrian friend: "All Germans are Nazis. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say, if there must be Nazis, Germans make the best ones"
Because they won the war. That, plus they are the top dog internationally, or one of the top dogs. So they can continue to march around as morally superior despite what they have done (and continue doing). I mean, had the Germans won the war, they would have done the exact same thing.
From agent orange to nuking civillian towns, to having segregation until the sixties, to insisting on capital punishment, to shoving their black population in jail (through systemic racist imbalances and injustices to people their 2-3 generation ancestors they f* up as slaves), to toppling legitimate governments and supporting dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, to "world cop", to drone attacks, to "patenting" farming seeds and genetic material and enforcing it world-wide, to mass-surveillance and creepy related laws, and what have you.
And when all else fails, they can always blame it to the acts of their "bad government" (or to some "bad apples" in the government) all the while benefiting from those actions, supporting them, voting those people in office, and maintaining that they are a democracy (which implies citizen responsibility in state actions).
What was so special in the Holocaust? I mean there were a lot of similarly dark points in history, both in terms of numbers (people killed) and cruelty, but still, it seems we always only care about the Holocaust (or at least it overshadows everything else).
I think we should remember other events too, more frequently.
Here is archival footage from Night and Fog of people very similar to you calmly waiting to board trains as if they were going on vacation. Look at what they're wearing. All are wearing nice clothing, their bags are packed with a week's worth of clothes. You can see them then being crammed into the cattle cars. Most of these people were gassed immediately upon arrival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PH8Da7lxpk&t=4m56s
Is there anything else like that in history? Genuine question.
I feel all weirded out.
The part about "in the western world" is pretty significant, as people identify more with people that they perceive to be more like themselves. That's probably a big part of the reason why we don't hear as often about the large 20th century genocides in China & Africa for example.
Hitler famously reasoned that in 50 years nobody would care about the jews, as at that time, already few remembered the armen genocide.
Germany was a normal Western state—the Weimar Republic was in many ways at the forefront of liberalism and governance. It is unprecedented that by legal and popular politics, Germans created the political and lethal machinery to victimize so many other Germans.
The Holocaust was a civil war where innocents were murdered or forced into slavery.
Hitler was a fool. Germans were among the best educated in the world, but Hitler personally was without precedent Europe's worst governor. Nevermind the betrayal of his own people; his economy relied unsustainably on slavery, his theories were bunk, his cowardice was monumental... He benefited from the long-term gains of the Weimar Republic's governance while simultaneously killing or exiling Germany's greatest asset, its intellectuals.
The Holocaust was a vehicle of this, Hitler's personal madness, unlike any other genocide.
Collaboration, most of all, defines the Holocaust. Hitler found collaborators throughout the whole world, from Japan to Moscow. The Soviet Union, itself the most victimized by the war, was for five years allied with Germany. There were Poles who eagerly betrayed their neighbors. Hungarian fascists were condemning civilians to death not months before the end of the war. The French collaborated in the Holocaust. It is unprecedented that anti-Semitism was so pervasive as to infect all of Europe.
The Holocaust showed that Western civilization, not just Hitler's Germany, was eager to execute unprecedented crimes against humanity.
These are but a few ways the Holocaust is distinct from other genocides, from the experience of American slavery, from even North Korean concentration camps and Soviet gulags. It is not about numbers. It is about what our civilization turned out to be capable of.
Western governments did nothing about Hitler's rise, but to equate that with Western civilization as a whole eagerly executing these crimes seems a bit of a stretch.
One theory is that WW2 and the "holocaust" have a special role, because the weirdness of the period following it. Because of the fight against communism, the USA and West Germany nearly instantly became allies after WW2 and occupation with the horrors past became discouraged. For example Hans Globke, one of the authors of the Nuremberg race laws, was allowed to be a high ranking minister in the Adenauer administration and some believe he was the reason why Germany and the CIA were not very interested in finding and prosecuting Adolf Eichmann at the time.
That is why there was a certain time lag in considering the events of WW2. In Germany there were the student revolts around 1968 and in 1969 the German chancellor Kiesinger had to step down because of his "nazi past" - which in comparison to Hans Globke was totally harmless. In a similiar vein the word "holocaust" mainly comes from a US TV-Series in 1978, the preferred jewish term is the "shoah".
I guess we will have to wait until the 2030s or so,to see if it still overshadows everything else then.
1) It was deliberate extermination of ethnic groups. Not killings as part of fighting a war, but deliberate extermination.
2) It was enormous in scale and took place over just a few years. Sure there have been lots of atrocities throughout history, but not many rival the scale of the Holocaust.
3) It happened in Europe and was perpetrated by Europeans against Europeans.
4) It happened not that long ago, and people are still alive who remember.
5) The perpetrators lost so completely that there is no political risk in recognizing and condemning it. For example atrocities (like Katyn) were perpetrated by USSR but since they were allied, the other allied powers had to downplay it. Some countries (like Israel) does not recognize the Armenian Genocide because they would lose Turkey as an important ally.
6) The allied won the war, so recognizing the holocaust underlines the heroism and just fight of the allied powers. Other genocides like the Rwandan does not in that way reflect positively on western powers. To some extend the holocaust can also be used to downplay allied war crimes, since whatever the allied did of bad things, the Nazis were way, way worse.
7) Jews have big cultural influence in the western world through litteratur, movies and so on. Comparatively few Roma are in litterature and movie business for example, so their experience tends to be less visible in popular culture.
One quote, describing the Red Army occupation of East Berlin: "In one notorious instance, Red Army soldiers entered the maternity hospital at Haus Dehlem and raped pregnant women, women who had just given birth, and women in the process of giving birth."[3]
[0]: http://historyimages.blogspot.com/ (WARNING: Graphic images, and poor formatting)
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465003389
[2]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/01/news.features11
[3]: http://historyimages.blogspot.com/2011/10/mass-rape-of-germa...
Apologies to good HNers for feeding the troll here, but I've always been curious about how holocaust deniers could have the balls to carry through with their opinions despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
I would argue that the holocaust has afforded the Jews enough to warrant motive.
To say "it did not happen", though, I wouldn't take such a stance. I personally would dispute its scope, greatly, in regard to the specific slaughter of Jews, and more relevantly, the constant reminder (read: disproportionately, as mentioned by other commenters) to sympathize with them.
Also, I'm with you on the [citation needed]. I've too little interest to contribute, myself.