The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis

The Polish Question was a very ugly, messy bit of the war and the peace that followed. Somewhat similar to Yugoslavia, there were divisions within the Polish Resistance organizations between those supporting the government-in-exile in London, and the pro-Soviet faction. One reason that the Red Army sat on its hands during the Warsaw Uprising was that the Polish forces involved were primarily drawn from the London-leaning Home Army. In other cases, members of the Home Army were offered the "choice" of joining the Red Army or being sent to labor camps.

One interesting what-if? to consider is what might have happened had Roosevelt lived to see the end of the war, and the various treaties and conference (notably the Potsdam Conference), instead of the inexperienced Truman.

One of the better treatments of the final days of WW2, and the tensions between the western Allies and the Soviets over Poland is http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-100-Days-Controversial/dp/081...

Semi-related. If you ever visit Warsaw (Poland). I highly recommend museum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of... http://www.polin.pl/en/

There is amazing/modern/interactive exhibition of 1000 years Jewish history in Poland. Most of it is very positive and peaceful. You are invited!

But significant resources were diverted. Around 2,000 Nazi soldiers were tied down by around 1,000 Jewish resistance fighters armed with ancient revolvers and molotov cocktails. And they were tied down for longer than it took the German army to conquer all of Poland and France.

Holding up 2,000 soldiers for a month isn't a big deal in the scheme of millions of soldiers. But when it's done by only 1,000 incredibly poorly armed civilians, it shows what could have been done with more and better armed civilians.

If what you say is true, then that weakens the authors thesis pretty drastically.

For example, you say: "even the Jews didn't believe it until the news broke out in the final year of the war in Europe". This uprising took place almost two years before V-E day, which means the Jews in Warsaw were not aware that they were "literally" fighting for their lives. They were instead fighting for their human rights, and their way of life. (We know they were destined for extermination camps, but they didn't; if what you say is correct.)

The author also points out that the deportations were 'ostensibly for resettlement in labor camps, but almost always for extermination' and 'Often, the Judenrat was told that as long as the ghetto worked hard to produce factory goods for the Germans, the ghetto would be allowed to survive.' Thus, how did the Jews of Warsaw know that genocide was planned for them, and not, say, work camps?

If they did not know, then thesis - that weak gun laws can help prevent genocide - is actually a broader one; that weak gun laws can help prevent ghettoization, or that weak gun laws can help prevent mass deportations.

Hence if there is any lesson to be learned, it sounds like the author is arguing for the increased weaponization of the Palestinians, in order to better reach the long agreed upon two state solution.

Another issue is that you added your own qualifier; "Tribal genocide ... cannot be just as easily compared to the Holocaust."

This is a different definition of genocide than the author. Or rather, when the "International Society for the Prevention of Crime", concluded "defensive measures are the most effective means for the prevention of genocide"; did that mean genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention? I think so. While you want to exclude "tribal genocide" from that definition.

In science there is an analysis error called "p-hacking". More specifically, if the correlation across the entire data set is too weak, some people will look at a subset which has a more detectable correlation. (XKCD calls this 'Hey, look at this interesting subgroup analysis'.) The problem is, the method of subsetting should be part of the significance analysis, and by excluding it, the p-value is artificially raised.

By choosing a subset of 'genocide', you weaken the intent of the essay. You say they cannot easily be applied to tribal genocide, which opens up the possibility that the can't be used for other genocides, and especially opens up the possibility that it can't be used in the US political context.

There are several different styles of history writing. One is to describe what happened. For example, there are histories of battles, and of Krakatoa, and of Newton, which follow more or less a timeline.

Another is to identify underlying patterns and trends that help understand what happened, and hopefully can be applied elsewhere. For examples, how did the introduction of light mobile guns by Gustavus Adolphus change the battlefield? Why did the explosion of Krakatoa have a big cultural impact as well as physical one? How are Newton's view on alchemy and biblical research connected to his work on physics?

The first is more descriptive, and the second is more predictive. Both are good history.

Both are scientific, but call for different sorts of research. Both require extensive literature analysis. The latter requires more work to come up with alternative hypothesis and relevant comparisons, in order to test and disprove hypotheses.

This article does both. I think it does best at the descriptive aspects of the event. But it uses a historical model that isn't well tested, but could be tested by looking towards other genocides to see if the model fits.

If the model doesn't fit in a more general sense, then in the context of US gun control laws, it's a curiosity at best, and not something that can be used in decision making.

It is trying to making that comparison, and not limit itself to the uprising, which is why I regard it as a bad piece of historical writing.