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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

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

#21

Post by mozumder »

ianamartin wrote: post #12
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…

Yes. This is the same military that didn't have the popular support to complete its objectives in the ME, so they phoned it in. That's what happens to countries that go to war under false pretense - they get to half-send their militaries for political appeasement.

Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that they would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war?

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

#22

Post by EGreg »

dogma1138 wrote: post #6
dalke wrote: post #2

What an odd opinion piece. It seems to suggest that the Jews of Nazi occupied countries were merely missing arms in order to significantly deter the Wehrmacht that was taking on the combined forces of the Soviet, British, and US military. Yet it doesn't explain why the French people in Nazi occupied countries, who had a larger gun culture, were so (relatively) easily subdued and kept pacified. If the thesis is correc…

There were active resistances in most occupied countries including France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance However a big difference between occupied populations and Jews is that Germany for the most part left the occupied population alone. Yes they were still oppressed and in many cases fell into poverty however they weren't hunted down by the SS, gathered and then shipped to concentration camps, ghet…

The Polish had guns AND fought back. How did it help them? Hitler and Stalin both invaded anyway.

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

#23

Post by mozumder »

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.

So, the rebels won the Civil War?

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

#25

Post by oldmanjay »

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…

there is only one fact used to justify that U.S. citizens can arm themselves, and that is the fact that our constitution guarantees us the right. no further emotional games are needed, but gun control enthusiasts want it to be a debate, so people play along.

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

#26

Post by Zhenya »

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…

Wrong.

The whole point is that even without ready access to guns, the Jews were able to fight of a powerful army. The idea here is to extrapolate how things would have went had they been armed to start with:

" There was little “gun culture” among European Jews of the 1930s, so few Jews had the equipment for “reloading” — the home manufacture of ammunition"

"...home manufacture of ammunition is legal everywhere in the United States."

"The Germans suffered over a thousand casualties in the first week of fighting alone. The Germans had to spend more time subduing the Warsaw Ghetto than they did conquering the entire nations of Poland or France."

etc etc

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

#27

Post by dogma1138 »

EGreg wrote: post #22
dogma1138 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were active resistances in most occupied countries including France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance However a big difference between occupied populations and Jews is that Germany for the most part left the occupied population alone. Yes they were still oppressed and in many cases fell into poverty however they weren't hunted down by the SS, gathered and then shipped to concentration camps, ghet…

The Polish had guns AND fought back. How did it help them? Hitler and Stalin both invaded anyway.

Yes they did, but again it's not the same situation exactly there were plenty of Jews that escaped the concentration camps, and later the death camps in Poland and joined the resistance but the majority of them couldn't.

I made it quite clear that arming a population might not have a clear impact on the amount of deaths, but it will have a clear impact on the way they died.

The Polish people didn't "had" to fight, at least not for survival this isn't an attempt to make their fight any less heroic or meaningful but they fought for freedom and ideals rather than not being branded as cattle and led to their deaths.

If more Jews could revolt the final solution might not have happened, not in the way it did anyhow, the Germans could only execute it because they have had very little internal and external resistance in doing so. If there was a much bigger Jewish resistance and there would be revolts in every work camp, ghetto and concentration camp the Germans could possible have had to give up on their plans, the cold and calculated truth of the Holocaust is that the Germans found them selves with too many Jews on their hands where exploiting them began to cost more than what they got in return.

Heck they had to ask the Catholic church to annul the marriages between "pure" Germans and German Jews in mass because that presented them with a real problem of having to disclose and produce death certificates for dead German Jews to their former husbands and wives so they could remarry.

So yes a strong and armed Jewish resistance might have played a big role in the outcome of the Holocaust they didn't had to drive an invading army out, they didn't fight for the freedom of a country or the ideals of the nation they fought for their own survival and making the final solution too costly to execute as well as directly sabotaging it (which is something that the allied forces refuse to do in the form of not bombing train lines and even the incinerators of the death camps) could've resulted in a very different outcome.

And Poland eventually won it's freedom, they did inflict heavy losses on German troops, and eventually they did convince the USSR to leave as well, but as i said it's a completely different conflict.

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

#28

Post by EGreg »

dogma1138 wrote: post #27
EGreg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Polish had guns AND fought back. How did it help them? Hitler and Stalin both invaded anyway.

Yes they did, but again it's not the same situation exactly there were plenty of Jews that escaped the concentration camps, and later the death camps in Poland and joined the resistance but the majority of them couldn't. I made it quite clear that arming a population might not have a clear impact on the amount of deaths, but it will have a clear impact on the way they died. The Polish people didn't "had" to fight, at…

I brought up the Polish because many of them did have to fight for survival, and many died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_Pol...

Approximately six million Polish citizens perished during World War II: about one fifth of the pre-war population. Most were civilian victims of the war crimes and crimes against humanity during the occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Half of those were Jews. The other half were other Poles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

"The Polish people didn't "had" to fight, at least not for survival"

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

#29

Post by powera »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

Historical note: it needs to be remembered that the allies did a great disservice to Poland after the war. The war was ostensibly started over Poland, the allies promised to liberate it, and in the end it was given out as spoils of the conflict.

Technically the Soviet Union was one of the allies, and if you asked the Soviet Union they would say they "liberated" Poland.

If you remember, there was a large conflict between the US and the Soviets for much of the 20th century over exactly these types of claims.

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

#30

Post by dogma1138 »

EGreg wrote: post #28
dogma1138 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they did, but again it's not the same situation exactly there were plenty of Jews that escaped the concentration camps, and later the death camps in Poland and joined the resistance but the majority of them couldn't. I made it quite clear that arming a population might not have a clear impact on the amount of deaths, but it will have a clear impact on the way they died. The Polish people didn't "had" to fight, at…

I brought up the Polish because many of them did have to fight for survival, and many died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_Pol... Approximately six million Polish citizens perished during World War II: about one fifth of the pre-war population. Most were civilian victims of the war crimes and crimes against humanity during the occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Half of those we…

Out of the 6M Polish casualties 3M of them were Jewish, the Polish people suffered extensively during WW2 there's no doubt about it.

Both the Germans and the Russians often practices universal punishment and exterminated entire villages for hosting resistance fighters and later on for cooperating with either Russian or German forces.

The 6M death figure which is horrible is also the total death accounts during the war which included Pols that died while serving in the Polish army, Poles that were conscripted to the German army, Poles who were Conscripted to the Soviet Army, Civilians who died in massacres, starvation, and disease.

Poland isn't the only country in which the civilian population encountered such acts, Germany wiped entire villages in Greece for showing the slightest sign of resistance and then wiped the nearest 3 villages as a warning to others.

War crimes always happens, but not every war crime is a Genocide, Poland might actually be a unique case because of how it was split between Stalin and Hitler and because of the animosity the Germans had towards it for "stealing" large parts of the "fatherland" after WW1.

But again it's hard to equate the crimes committed in Poland to Genocide, especially considering that even during the War both the occupied Polish government and the exiled Government continued counting loses of "ethnic" poles, which at the end amounted to about 10% of the pre-war "ethnic" poles population.

But that could've as easily been changed if the war would've dragged longer and once the Germans finished dealing with their "Jewish Problem" they would no longer see the Slavic people as "necessary slave labor".

Wars are shit, WW2 and the Holocaust is probably the shittiest of them all, but if you ask the Poles would they rather be armed and fighting or be the next inline for complementary train tickets you would probably get only a single response and that is we rather fight, there are many ways to die and while we all like idolizing heroic deaths there is almost no one that would rather not fight and die than die in naked in a gas chamber.

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