91–100 of 156 posts
At first I thought the author might be poking fun at the war -- then I realized that he was actually poking fun at himself. People have high standards for fiction, yet some of the strangest things are real-life stories from history. A couple of my favorites from the Pacific Theater: 1) Radar detected the Japanese strike force approaching Pearl Harbor, but the guy in charge said it was a glitch. 2) The Japanese planne…
As I mentioned before, not only do the Nazis have an urgent plan to conquer the world ASAP, but they also have super science weapons research. Stealth bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and jet planes. Yet, at the beginning of the war, they faced cavalry charges ! There are real life super-scientists engaged in real-life super-science intrigue to keep nuclear secrets out of Nazi hands. And on top of that,…
This is a Euro-centric perspective. The Germans did not do anything different than any of the colonial powers in their own colonies. The difference with the Germans is that they decided to colonize Europe.
In terms of excess mortality, the man-made British famines in India are worse. The genocide of Native Americans by the Spanish, English and French colonists is unparalleled in human history for its duration, brutality and number of casualties. In Africa it is much the same - forget Belgians in the Congo, the British had death camps in Kenya in the 1950s!
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"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale in comparison with those of Stalin and Mao.
What kind of asshole draws historical conclusions based on /numbers/ dead? Reducing the dead to numbers and comparing a lost life to another an atrocity in itself.
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My favorite messed up weapons from WW II. The Americans came up with an anti-tank grenade that was really sticky so that it would stay to the tank it was thrown at. Discontinued due to an unfortunate tendency to remain in the thrower's hand. The Russians (land of Pavlov and all that) came up with the idea of dogs with bombs strapped to their backs that had learned to associate the under side of tanks with food. Great…
(You meant "The Russians (land of Pavlov...", right?)
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Another big difference was that in Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China just about everyone was under potential threat - being a member of the party or close to the leader wasn't really any help. Whereas in Nazi Germany it was a much colder clinical decision to systematically remove "undesirable" elements from society. I think it is the systematic element of their terror, rather than the sheer lunatic barbarity of th…
isn't this a reductionist view? the night of the long knives is just the first example I can think of, but I'm pretty sure there were more examples of people _becoming_ undesirable.
There were some courageous Germans who chose to defy the Nazis (e.g. the White Rose group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose) but that to me is quite different.
The overwhelming majority of Germans, if they didn't belong to one of the racial or political categories hated by the Nazis, had nothing to fear unless they chose to defy the state. Most didn't.
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"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale in comparison with those of Stalin and Mao.
What kind of asshole draws historical conclusions based on /numbers/ dead? Reducing the dead to numbers and comparing a lost life to another an atrocity in itself.
Stalin
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As I mentioned before, not only do the Nazis have an urgent plan to conquer the world ASAP, but they also have super science weapons research. Stealth bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and jet planes. Yet, at the beginning of the war, they faced cavalry charges ! There are real life super-scientists engaged in real-life super-science intrigue to keep nuclear secrets out of Nazi hands. And on top of that,…
"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale in comparison with those of Stalin and Mao.
As for the count, there are reasons to believe that Hitler was direct cause for WW2 in Europe. That one took quite a bit more people than 6M Jews you seem to imply.
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"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale in comparison with those of Stalin and Mao.
True but if you look at the manner in which it was done then the Nazis are up there. What was horrible was the systematic way it was done. It wasn't a city gassed on a whim, or a population shot because they where rebelling. Those are terrible, but what is terrible about what the Nazis did was in the planning and efficiency of it all.
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As I mentioned before, not only do the Nazis have an urgent plan to conquer the world ASAP, but they also have super science weapons research. Stealth bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and jet planes. Yet, at the beginning of the war, they faced cavalry charges ! There are real life super-scientists engaged in real-life super-science intrigue to keep nuclear secrets out of Nazi hands. And on top of that,…
"And on top of that, these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined." This is a Euro-centric perspective. The Germans did not do anything different than any of the colonial powers in their own colonies. The difference with the Germans is that they decided to colonize Europe. In terms of excess mortality, the man-made British famines in India are worse. The genocide of Native Americ…