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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#11

Post by benjohnson »

mozumder wrote: post #8

The implication here is that an armed American population would be able to defeat a tyrannical US government. This is the same US government that's armed with nuclear weapons, tanks with composite armor, a hacker network that would make Google blush, and populist democratic backing. Additionally, this is the same US government has killed over 600,000 of its own citizens before for rebelling. It is the height of socio…

>>It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system.

Wholesale defeat of tyranny isn't necessary - a deterrent is sufficent. Very few soldiers would follow an order if they knew that it put their family at risk for reprisal.

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#12

Post by ianamartin »

mozumder wrote: post #8

The implication here is that an armed American population would be able to defeat a tyrannical US government. This is the same US government that's armed with nuclear weapons, tanks with composite armor, a hacker network that would make Google blush, and populist democratic backing. Additionally, this is the same US government has killed over 600,000 of its own citizens before for rebelling. It is the height of socio…

Is that the same well-armed and powerful U.S. Military that has repeatedly had its ass handed to it by small groups of fighters with little more than small arms and IEDs in the Middle East? Is that the all-powerful, unbeatable military force you're speaking of?

Your argument sounds quite a lot like what was being said around the time the US wanted independence from England. What? We're going to fight them? With their army, and their artillery, and their guns, and their funding, and their navy, and all that?

This argument has nothing at all to do with working with or against the system as it currently exists. The argument is about what happens when a system is so completely broken that it is shamelessly murdering a lot of people.

Even the staunchest advocates for guns in the US go out and vote. They participate in the system. It's not a binary choice. You can choose to participate now and hedge your bets for later. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

If you think guerilla warfare doesn't work against superior forces, you haven't paid much attention to, well, anything.

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#13

Post by mdpopescu »

Throwawayxtu wrote: post #10

Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people…

the Nazis lost 300 soldiers

So, you are saying that this statement "the Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone" is false?

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#14

Post by Throwawayxtu »

mdpopescu wrote: post #13
Throwawayxtu wrote: post #10

Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people…

the Nazis lost 300 soldiers So, you are saying that this statement "the Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone" is false?

It seems he's pulling that number out of thin air: perhaps he's conflating it with the general Warsaw uprising. The German figures are about 20 killed, and about 100 injured. Marek Edelman (a leader of the uprising) had an optimistic estimate of about 300 casualties. So the likely figure is likely somewhere between.

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#15

Post by gregshap »

Throwawayxtu wrote: post #14
mdpopescu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Nazis lost 300 soldiers So, you are saying that this statement "the Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone" is false?

It seems he's pulling that number out of thin air: perhaps he's conflating it with the general Warsaw uprising. The German figures are about 20 killed, and about 100 injured. Marek Edelman (a leader of the uprising) had an optimistic estimate of about 300 casualties. So the likely figure is likely somewhere between.

"casualties" includes injuries

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#16

Post by smanzer »

Throwawayxtu wrote: post #10

Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people…

It does seem rather dubious to talk about "resources diverted" as a sufficient metric for success in this context, but I think that this story is also not a particularly strong rebuttal to the NRA claim. From the article it appears that the rebels were initially armed with a very small number of poor quality low power weapons. We're not talking about the NRA utopia of widespread ownership of accurate semiautomatic rifles here.

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#17

Post by DanBC »

benjohnson wrote: post #11
mozumder wrote: post #8

The implication here is that an armed American population would be able to defeat a tyrannical US government. This is the same US government that's armed with nuclear weapons, tanks with composite armor, a hacker network that would make Google blush, and populist democratic backing. Additionally, this is the same US government has killed over 600,000 of its own citizens before for rebelling. It is the height of socio…

>>It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system. Wholesale defeat of tyranny isn't necessary - a deterrent is sufficent. Very few soldiers would follow an order if they knew that it put their family at risk for reprisal.

How'd that work out for the Branch Davidians or Ruby Ridge?

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#18

Post by yummyfajitas »

Throwawayxtu wrote: post #10

Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people…

According to the author it's better to die on your feet and take out some Nazis than die as a slave helping the Nazis. Also, according to the author, the Nazis might have thought twice about Poland if there were uprisings in more than just Warsaw.

Sometimes these uprisings do actually save the people involved. It wouldn't have saved the Jews, but it did save about half of the Tutsis.

Closer to home, it's also worth reading the book "We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement". tl;dr; violent terrorists were regularly attacking black Americans, American Indians and insufficiently loyal white people, and armed resistance put a big dent in it. (Note that law enforcement generally sided with the terrorists.)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hayes_Pond

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#19

Post by douche »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #5
douche wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last week, one of the U.S. presidential candidates made a rather ignorant statement about gun control and the Holocaust. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt is the immediately obvious example to look at. This piece is really an advertisement for the author's upcoming book, and this piece seems pretty obviously cribbed from one of his chapters. It reads less oddly if you read the title of the book, and go look at the description…

I was unaware of the potential political implications of this article. I'd probably not have submitted had I known that. I'm not following the election horserace, this was just an interesting historical article that came up in my feed.

It's not a bad piece of history writing. It's just going to bring out the gun-control debaters.

The Warsaw Jews did pretty well, considering they had less arms and ammunition on hand than you'd find in a rural US WalMart. Victory was not an option - a year later, the considerably larger, better-equipped Warsaw Uprising failed as bloodily, when Soviet forces nearly on the outskirts of the city failed to raise a finger in support.

Re: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

#20

Post by Throwawayxtu »

smanzer wrote: post #16
Throwawayxtu wrote: post #10

Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just repeating a long-stated claim. The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested -- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000 people…

It does seem rather dubious to talk about "resources diverted" as a sufficient metric for success in this context, but I think that this story is also not a particularly strong rebuttal to the NRA claim. From the article it appears that the rebels were initially armed with a very small number of poor quality low power weapons. We're not talking about the NRA utopia of widespread ownership of accurate semiautomatic ri…

Well, it's certainly true that if the Jews had tanks and nuclear weapons, things might have been different. But you have to understand that this NRA claim is in the context of a twin claim (also dubious in nature): that the Nazis had practiced gun control. So the general claim assumes that the Jews would have access to those weapons that they'd noramlly have had access to in the absence of the Nazi regime. Which is low power weapons.
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