National Socialism vs. Communism.

LHoffman · Jun 9, 2015, 5:35 PM

@Private:

Hoff - You are a wise man!

That is just the facade I try to propagate. Reality, as in everything, is somewhere in between.

But thanks. :wink:

KurtGodel7 · Jun 9, 2015, 6:08 PM

Private Panic wrote:

I find the guilt of the blockaders a complex moral question.

If I use bombs to kill the civilian population of an enemy city, the responsibility for those deaths is mine, solely. If I use poison gas to wipe out the civilian population of that city, the responsibility for the deaths is once again mine. If I use food as a weapon with which to kill that civilian population, the responsibility for those deaths is also mine.

During WWII, the gross supply of food in German-occupied Europe fell by 30%. The biggest single cause of that decline was the Allied food blockade, which directly accounted for half the total decrease. The remaining half of the decline was caused by varying factors. Under Stalin’s scorched earth policy, food stores and agricultural machinery were destroyed. The Allied food blockade cut Europe off from fertilizer, a factor which also contributed to the decrease in agricultural production. There were cases in which the German military took farm animals for military use, which also contributed to reduction in agricultural output.

Before food can be consumed, it needs to be moved from the farmlands to the cities. That typically means putting it on trains. Also, harvest only occurs once a year, whereas consumption occurs all year round. That necessitates large storage facilities for food. Both the train cars carrying food and the warehouses storing it could be (and were) subjected to Allied bombing raids. Europe’s actual food situation may have been significantly worse than the above-mentioned 30% figure would imply.

We like to decry the blockage of humanitarian aid when it suits us and yet leave
open the possibility of it being acceptable when we wish it to be.

That’s true, and it’s hypocrisy. It reminds me of the fact that the American government decried the September 11th attacks (3,000 civilian deaths), while happily participating in the Dresden raids (at least 30,000 civilian deaths, against a target with no military value). They can’t have it both ways: either killing enemy civilians is a war crime or it isn’t.

But returning to the genocide guilt of the Germans - killing in self defence is one thing, but
killing in self-interest is entirely different, no matter how desperate the circumstances.

During the early 1930s, the Soviet government created an artificial famine in the Ukraine. The famine killed an estimated 7 million people, including 3 million children. When the famine was at its worst, there were cases in which mothers would take their babies, boil them, and eat them.

I’ve never experienced severe famine. I expect that most of those reading this could say the same. I am certainly in no position to pass judgement on those who did everything they possibly could to protect themselves and their families from the type of suffering endured by the Ukrainians and the other victims of Soviet mass murder.

KG - your own example includes giving you the power to decide who lives and dies.

There will often be people in a position of power who can decide who lives and dies. Unfortunately, there will also be times when they will be forced to make a decision–when circumstances are such that it is literally impossible for them to save everyone. It’s very easy and convenient for us to find fault with decisions of that nature. We don’t have their responsibilities. We can focus on the bad consequences their actions did create, while ignoring the bad consequences which would have resulted from any of the alternative actions available to them.

You can make a valid case for that re-evaluation without excusing the Germans their evils.

Being persuasive is my secondary goal. My primary goal is to tell the truth, whatever that truth may be. I realize I’m fighting an uphill battle here. Everyone reading this has spent a lifetime steeped in Allied propaganda. That kind of propaganda effort affects everyone. It affected me. It took me years–and thousands and thousands of pages of historical reading–to overcome the effect of that propaganda effort. Even now, it’s possible there are still elements of Allied propaganda I’ve unknowingly failed to reject.

But once I’ve disproved an Allied assertion in my own research, I can’t then act as though that assertion is true on some discussion board in an effort to seem more conformist to the Allied propaganda effort than I actually am. The fact that the Allies heaped a bunch of mud on Nazi Germany is not proof (or evidence) that the Nazis did anything wrong. Of course, the Nazis did do things wrong–there is no question about that. But those crimes were not what motivated the anti-Nazi propaganda effort. Had the Allies cared about preventing atrocities, they would have adopted anti-Soviet foreign policies. No major Western democracy adopted an anti-Soviet foreign policy prior to 1948.

ColonelCarter · Jun 9, 2015, 10:45 PM

@LHoffman:

As far as I can tell Colonel Carter, all your posts, prior to those on this thread, have been on other boards and dealt with game tactics rather than historical argument. That’s perfectly fine, but you are the one who is ignorant (and I say that politely) of the legacy of discussions on this area of A&A.org… unless of course you have read much, but never posted. I cannot know that for sure, but IL does not need to support his statement about past experience. That is for you to look up and determine yourself. All that said… Welcome brother! :lol:

I have followed this forum for a while and am well aware of IL’s and Kurt’s history, but that is besides the point. It just rubbed me the wrong way that IL (who as far as I can tell from what I’ve seen on these forums is a well-versed and intelligent individual) would decry Kurt’s response to the discussion in this thread because of their previous disagreements, even though those qualms were not relevant to the discussion, as I pointed out in the second half of your quote of mine. Perhaps the first half came across as hostile, and for that I apologize, as well as possibly derailing the discussion further.

With that, unless more discussion relating to National Socialism and Communism that I want to respond to show up, I’m out as well.

LHoffman · Jun 10, 2015, 12:18 PM

@ColonelCarter:

I have followed this forum for a while and am well aware of IL’s and Kurt’s history, but that is besides the point. It just rubbed me the wrong way that IL (who as far as I can tell from what I’ve seen on these forums is a well-versed and intelligent individual) would decry Kurt’s response to the discussion in this thread because of their previous disagreements, even though those qualms were not relevant to the discussion, as I pointed out in the second half of your quote of mine. Perhaps the first half came across as hostile, and for that I apologize, as well as possibly derailing the discussion further.

With that, unless more discussion relating to National Socialism and Communism that I want to respond to show up, I’m out as well.

Not a problem. I am not here to foster animosity, nor shy away from it if it exists. However, my opinion is that the legacy of former discussions are very relevant if their themes continue again here or elsewhere, which they very clearly were.

But anyway… this is all besides the point, or the subject, as it were. My apologies.

strategic planner · Jun 10, 2015, 4:51 PM

Well the western allies were good for the most part. Except that FDR buddied up to stalin, and abandoned eastern europe (along with POWs) because he admired stalin.
Churchill was mostly good also.

Both the nazis and the soviets were evil. However if you put a gun to my head and said pick one to live in i would say nazi germany 8 days of the week. For all of the terrible qualities of hitler, the one thing you cannot say about him is that he was disloyal. Hitler actually had “friends” (associates, confidants, etc). Stalin basically refused to a POW release-trade for his own son, and his daughter committed suicide in large part because of him.

It is insane to suggest that the final solution was the allies fault. Really it was hitler and companies pet project. They probably could have come much closer to winning without that mess.

However while i totally disagree on many things Kurt says, he has one good point. Modern america conveniently ignores soviet atrocities that made the nazis look like angels (a comparison). The nazis were very evil but the soviets were evil er. Does that make sense?

TLDR: western allies were mostly good (except for FDR loving stalin/ussr. Patton saw that as bad, and was right). Nazi germany was very evil but a much better place than the ussr. Ussr = like north korea.

Narvik · Jun 10, 2015, 5:15 PM

Now if I was a Jew I would rather be killed in Germany. They used gas which is fast and clean. Stalin sent people to a slow and painful dead I cold Sibieria

CWO Marc · Jun 10, 2015, 5:59 PM

@strategic:

For all of the terrible qualities of hitler, the one thing you cannot say about him is that he was disloyal.

I’m not sure Hitler’s long-serving Party comrade Ernst Rohm would have agreed with that statement when Hitler had him executed in 1934. Rohm envisioned having the SA replace the Wehrmacht in the medium-to-long term, as part of the ongoing transformation of Germany being effected by the Nazis. Hitler, who had a different agenda, was secure enough in his position by 1934 that he no longer needed the SA (who had been instrumental in bringing him to power) – but he very much needed the regular Army’s support and manpower to start re-drawing the map of Europe. He therefore bought the Wehrmacht’s loyalty by getting rid of its potential competitors: in a very Stalin-like move, he ordered the arrest or execution of the SA leadership (including Rohm, personal loyalty to his old comrade be damned) and basically sidelined the SA organization because it had served its primary purpose (getting Hitler to power) and could thus easily be dispensed with.

KurtGodel7 · Jun 11, 2015, 1:13 AM

During the period in question (the early '30s), the German Army was limited to 100,000 men by the Versailles Treaty. On the other hand, the SA was a quasi-military organization which had at least 500,000 men. The regular army was certainly more combat-effective than the SA on a man for man basis, but the SA had much larger numbers. As such, the SA could have plunged Germany into civil war, had that been what it decided to do.

Roehm (the head of the SA) was becoming increasingly discontent with Hitler and his administration. Foehn had expected Hitler’s rise to power to be a time of redistribution, with money, positions, and so forth going to old party comrades. Hitler wanted positions allocated by merit, and did not want party hacks advanced to positions for which they were not qualified. Whenever he deviated from that philosophy, for example in the case of Goering, the result was typically bad for Germany.

Roehm was discontent, but was he on the verge of open rebellion and civil war? Hitler was convinced he was. It is quite possible that some of Roehm’s rivals and enemies within the Nazi party fed Hitler false or exaggerated data about Roehm’s future intentions. But that is only speculation. We may never know for certain whether Roehm did or did not plan open rebellion against Hitler. At the time, Hitler had to make a quick decision based on limited data. He chose to place avoidance of a bloody civil war above loyalty to a friend. If you want to find things for which to fault Hitler, there are worse things you could point to than that.

Imperious Leader · Jun 11, 2015, 7:01 AM

Now if I was a Jew I would rather be killed in Germany. They used gas which is fast and clean. Stalin sent people to a slow and painful dead I cold Siberia

You got to be kidding? From the arguments presented, being a Jew in Germany is apparently better than being a German in Germany because all Germans were starved by Churchill and FDR and Jews just hanged around and played hide and go seek with the SS. And if you were a polish Jew, you could not blame Hitler for invading and exterminating, but again just blame Churchill and others for staving everyone. Hitler was forced into this war of extermination and we only have Churchill to blame and the Americans and Soviets. Adolf was basically a swell dude. How could we have been so mistaken?

Answer: To merely bring up examples and raise them to the level of where real evil was committed and totally ignore the basic facts. And if you repeat the lie as Herr Goebbels points out, you can claim the truth by repetition. Fantastic!!

Example: thread about the best German tank… well the greatest tank could be a Panzer V, but the greatest killer of innocents and the greatest crime was the Morgenthau Plan, which starved more people than Hitler could have possibly murdered, and BTW Hitler had to kill them because the cost of exporting people cost too much, so their deaths are not the Nazi’s fault… its anybody else’s.

Private-Panic · Jun 11, 2015, 3:20 PM

@KurtGodel7:

…whatever that truth may be. …

I do not want to restart the argument, but I do think a clarification is worthwhile.

The issue in Kurt and my debate was not one of truth, in the sense of disputed facts. We agreed that the Nazis pursued a policy of systematic and deliberate genocide using gas chambers, mobile death squads and so on. We agreed that the Allies were blockading food supplies which lead to starvation. These facts were accepted by both of us.

The issue was whether the Allied blockade transferred guilt for genocide from the Nazis to the Allies. I can understand that the Allied blockade might be regarded as justification for a food allocation that lead to death for those not favoured, although the furthest I could myself go is to regard it as extenuating rather than exculpatory. But to exonerate those who built and filled the gas chambers and pass that guilt to those who put in place the food blockade is beyond my understanding.

This difference does not depend on the facts, but on moral standpoint. Unfortunately, moral truth is even tougher to grasp than facts ……

KurtGodel7 · Jun 11, 2015, 5:29 PM

Private Panic wrote,

The issue in Kurt and my debate was not one of truth, in the sense of disputed facts.

Let’s say that a spaceship has ten people on board, and exactly enough air for all ten people to arrive safely at their destination. A malicious man releases 30% of that spaceship’s air supply into outer space. At that point, the man has become guilty of the deaths of three people. We don’t yet know which three people the man just killed. In fact, there’s a strong likelihood that the responsibility for selecting the victims for the man’s crime will fall to the captain. The captain will be responsible for saying, “You seven get air, you three don’t.” The fact that the captain was forced into making that decision does not absolve the man who released the air from guilt. Nor does it transfer guilt onto the captain’s shoulders.

Narvik · Jun 11, 2015, 7:01 PM

@wheatbeer:

In addition to these differences, much of the hostility can simply be attributed to Germany and USSR seeking to dominate overlapping territory.

An expansionist Germany (whether Nazi or Communist) was inevitably going to mistrust an expansionist Soviet Union.

To get the thread back on track. I guess you are spot on, Wheatbeer. Expansionist is the key word here. Nazism, Communism, Kingdom, Fascizm and so on are just names, and names don’t hurt anybody. Its when you steal your fellow mans land the problems start. Hitler and Stalin were basically thieves. Then we can debate who were the better or lesser thief and in that case Hitler win.

wheatbeer · Jun 12, 2015, 4:45 AM

Minor note: I should have written “and vice versa” at the end of that second sentence Narvik quoted (surprised no one complained about that earlier :lol:).

Returning to the original post, the ideological differences of these regimes tend to be overshadowed by the practical similarities of conducting total war as a dictatorship. That doesn’t mean the ideological differences are irrelevant.

Consider National Socialism as taking ethno-nationalism to its logical extreme. Socialism here is just a tool to harness and direct the collective/undivided strength of a nation as part of (in their minds) an inevitable Darwinian struggle between nations.

Communism does not cultivate the strength of any particular nation. Quite the contrary, it ultimately aims to dissolve nations. Socialism here isn’t just a tool to fight others. For a Communist believer, socialism simply paves the way for the ultimate idealized end, a classless/anarchist society.

(Before commenting, please note, I am using the word “nation” in the classical sense. Nation refers to an ethnic entity not a state entity.)

KurtGodel7 · Jun 12, 2015, 6:55 AM

Imperious Leader wrote,

Example: thread about the best German tank… well the greatest tank could be a
Panzer V, but the greatest killer of innocents and the greatest crime was the Morgenthau Plan

I would never do something like that!

On another matter, Christopher Lee recently passed away. :( Lee was known for having played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings, Count Dooku in Star Wars, and other roles along those lines. He had a deep voice and a commanding, masculine, aristocratic presence. A typical theme for a Lee-played character was to initially side with the good guys. But then to commit a deep betrayal. His manner would give the betrayal a certain dignity. High evil, if you will, rather than petty evil.

One of the movies in which he starred involved the United States and Russia. There wasn’t a sufficiently evil power for the Christopher Lee-played character to betray himself to. So he went to work to create one. He and a few others began a plot to revive the old Soviet Union; with his supposed loyalty to the Russian government serving as a cloak under which to hide his betrayal and his plans to overthrow that government.

During Finland’s Winter War, Lee served as a pilot, and helped the brave Finns fight the evil Soviet invaders. He fought for anti-communism. Later, he joined the RAF; and proceeded to fight on the same side as communism. The anti-communists for whom he’d initially fought may have felt betrayed. They may also have felt that his deep voice and masculine, aristocratic bearing gave the betrayal a certain dignity.

Christopher Lee was not the only one guilty of betrayal during WWII. The French promised that if Germany invaded Poland, they would launch a general offensive against Germany within 15 days of mobilization. That promise was never kept–nor was it ever intended to be. Even worse, the British and the French initiated a food blockade against Germany–a food blockade which caused the deaths of millions of Poles. Not content with having thrown their Polish ally under the bus, the British and the French proceeded to use their food blockade to murder Poles by the millions!

Now where were we? Ah yes, Christopher Lee. All flippancy aside, he was a great actor, and he will be missed. May he rest in peace. :(

LHoffman · Jun 12, 2015, 12:15 PM

@KurtGodel7:

Let’s say that a spaceship has ten people on board, and exactly enough air for all ten people to arrive safely at their destination. A malicious man releases 30% of that spaceship’s air supply into outer space. At that point, the man has become guilty of the deaths of three people. We don’t yet know which three people the man just killed. In fact, there’s a strong likelihood that the responsibility for selecting the victims for the man’s crime will fall to the captain. The captain will be responsible for saying, “You seven get air, you three don’t.” The fact that the captain was forced into making that decision does not absolve the man who released the air from guilt. Nor does it transfer guilt onto the captain’s shoulders.

The captain must have not liked the three Jews that were on board then. Easy decision. I don’t think the captain felt guilty.

This is all just transference of blame or guilt. The stunning assumption here is that the Captain (… Hitler) has to choose people to die at all.

Besides, the analogy doesn’t quite fit. 10 people on a spaceship is different from 40 million in a country. The people in Germany (and their leaders) had more options than stay and die of starvation. And if some of those options were taken from them (escape, emigration), then whose fault is that?

KurtGodel7 · Jun 13, 2015, 1:17 AM

L. Hoffman wrote:

The stunning assumption here is that the Captain (… Hitler) has to choose people to die at all.

It’s not an assumption. It’s a basic statement of fact.

Let X = the number of calories needed to keep everyone in German-held territory alive
Let Y = the number of calories physically available in that territory.

If X > Y, people will die. The larger the difference, the more people die.

The people in Germany (and their leaders) had more options than stay and die of starvation.

What options were those? No major Western democratic nation offered Germany any peace terms other than unconditional surrender. After Barbarossa, the unconditional surrender was required to be to all the Allies, including the Soviet Union.

There were some German generals interested in overthrowing Hitler and making peace with the Western democracies. They covertly contacted the American government. FDR responded by saying that he made no distinction between a Nazi and non-Nazi government, and that unconditional surrender was an absolute requirement either way. Upon hearing this, a number of the German generals abandoned their plans to assassinate Hitler.

aequitas-et-veritas · Jun 13, 2015, 7:52 AM

@KurtGodel7:

L. Hoffman wrote:

The stunning assumption here is that the Captain (… Hitler) has to choose people to die at all.

It’s not an assumption. It’s a basic statement of fact.

Let X = the number of calories needed to keep everyone in German-held territory alive
Let Y = the number of calories physically available in that territory.

If X > Y, people will die. The larger the difference, the more people die.

The people in Germany (and their leaders) had more options than stay and die of starvation.

What options were those? No major Western democratic nation offered Germany any peace terms other than unconditional surrender. After Barbarossa, the unconditional surrender was required to be to all the Allies, including the Soviet Union.

There were some German generals interested in overthrowing Hitler and making peace with the Western democracies. They covertly contacted the American government. FDR responded by saying that he made no distinction between a Nazi and non-Nazi government, and that unconditional surrender was an absolute requirement either way. Upon hearing this, a number of the German generals abandoned their plans to assassinate Hitler.

Sorry Kurt but that is pure NONSENSE.
You are basically saying life is Math,but it is not!

Every single Person on this Earth living, lived and will be living is giving the Option to choose.
With your Statement you are making life as we know it as an result of Math.
It is not working!

KurtGodel7 · Jun 13, 2015, 5:19 PM

aequitas et veritas wrote:

You are basically saying life is Math,but it is not!

I’m not saying that life is math. I’m saying that life is subject to certain mathematical and scientific principles. For example:

You choose what you eat, and how much you exercise. But the outcomes of those choices are a result of medical and scientific principles. Or to take another example: places of worship are designed to be physically resistant to high winds or other types of severe weather. It is very rare for a religious leader to design his place of worship in such a way that it ought to collapse according to the laws of physics, and then for him to pray for a miraculous exemption from those laws.

If religious leaders typically rely on the laws of physics (as opposed to miracles) to keep their places of worship standing, it’s reasonable for secular leaders to rely on the laws of physics in their efforts to feed the people within their borders. Unfortunately, those physical laws dictate the following:

If [calories available] < [calories needed to keep everyone alive], some people will die. I’m no happier about that logic than anyone else. Bear in mind that a number of my distant Polish relatives undoubtedly died as a result of that brutal math. But getting all emotional about this would not change the underlying physical principles. Emotions are not substitutes for food in people’s bellies. Food–rather than emotion–is what was needed, and what Germany did not have.

Wheetbeer wrote:

Consider National Socialism as taking ethno-nationalism to its logical extreme.

Agreed.

Communism . . . ultimately aims to dissolve nations.

Also agreed.

Narvik wrote,

Expansionist is the key word here. Nazism, Communism, Kingdom, Fascizm and so on are just names . . .

I agree that both the Nazis and the communists were expansionistic. The goal of Hitler’s foreign policy was to conquer all the Soviet Union west of the Urals. That would have protected Germany from the communist threat, obtained the Lebensraum Hitler wanted, and given Germany the same strength relative to Europe that the United States had relative to North America. As Hitler pointed out in Mein Kampf, no one had ever succeeded in imposing a Versailles Treaty on the United States. Nor did he want anyone to ever again succeed in doing so to Germany.

The goal of communism is world conquest. Communists were far more expansionistic than the Nazis or the Japanese.

I would also argue that Western democracies have sometimes been expansionistic. In the absence of Western expansionism, the English language would have been confined to England, and the French language to France. Instead of which, English is the dominant language in most of North America, India, and other places colonized by Britain. French is the dominant language in large parts of Africa, and in other places too.

wheatbeer · Jun 14, 2015, 3:05 AM

@KurtGodel7:

The goal of communism is world conquest.

I will assume that you mean: world conquest was a goal of Stalinist socialism and not “Communism”.

Marx’s manifesto never advocated conquest. He believed revolution was an inevitable and organic process. Marx never imagined that revolution would fail in Western Europe. The idea of an agrarian state like Russia becoming socialist and then imposing socialism upon others by conventional military force would have sounded like utter madness to Marx.

KurtGodel7 · Jun 14, 2015, 4:21 PM

@wheatbeer:

I will assume that you mean: world conquest was a goal of Stalinist socialism and not “Communism”.

Marx’s manifesto never advocated conquest. He believed revolution was an inevitable and organic process. Marx never imagined that revolution would fail in Western Europe. The idea of an agrarian state like Russia becoming socialist and then imposing socialism upon others by conventional military force would have sounded like utter madness to Marx.

When I wrote that world conquest was the goal of communism, that’s exactly what I meant. Marx envisioned a world completely dominated by communism, with no other systems of government present. Engels in particular was very emphatic that violence was needed to achieve this goal.

It’s true that Marx seemed to envision the source of this violence as coming from people rebelling against their own governments, rather than communist governments violently conquering non-communist ones. At the time the Manifesto was written, the world had no communist governments.

But if a group of communist revolutionaries, people who see themselves as part of a movement committed to the violent removal of all non-communist governments everywhere, happen to seize control of some local government, what are they to do then? Are they supposed to just put aside their revolutionary fervor, and enjoy the utopia their local government will supposedly create? Or, having overthrown their own local bourgeoise with violence, maybe they’ll feel inclined to do the same to neighboring nations’ bourgeoise. Going after one’s neighbors can be either overt (military conquest) or covert (subversion and attempts to weaken the existing social order). Stalin was absolutely delighted to do both things to his neighbors, and was perfectly happy to use subversion against more distant nations as well.

Military conquest–especially on a world war type scale–carries more risks than subversion. Stalin’s more cautious successors tended to shy away from more than purely local military conquests, while continuing to fully embrace his emphasis on subversion. Every Soviet leader prior to Gorbachev embraced world conquest as the natural long term goal for the Soviet Union. A world controlled by one world government–a communist government–was the same goal Marx and Engles had. The fact the Soviets embraced additional means of achieving the violent removal of non-communist regimes is true, but does not alter the basic Marx/Engels declaration of war against all non-communist governments everywhere.

National Socialism vs. Communism.

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