@ABWorsham4 probably still scared the starving civilians , carrying rifles and 2 bullets each, half to death at the time though .
What if the Axis won the War?
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However, human fertility rates are inversely correlated with genetic intelligence. This means that the human race is becoming progressively dumber.
Care to cite some papers that support this premise Kurt?
One of the results of the Allied victory is that people have been imbued with anti-eugenics scare stories and propaganda, to the point where calm, rational, emotion-free consideration of the issues at hand is no longer an option.
It almost seems you lament this? Nazi concentration camps and the slaughter of millions of people imbued people with anti-eugenics feelings. The fact you classify history as scare stories and propaganda concerns me.
You’ve made a very reasonable request that I support my statements about dysgenic fertility rates. If you’re in the mood for an in-depth paper, you could try the following:
Intelligence, Volume 32, Issue 2, March-April 2004, Pages 193-201
Richard Lynn, Marian Van CourtOr, if you just want to click on a link, there is this.
In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by .81 points per generation. Taking .71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks & Fulker,[14] they calculated a dysgenic decline of .57 IQ points per generation.[15]
Another way of checking the negative relationship between IQ and fertility is to consider the relationship which educational attainment has to fertility, since education is known to be a reasonable proxy for IQ, correlating with IQ at .55;[16] . . . One study investigating fertility and education carried out in 1991 found that high school dropouts in America had the most children (2.5 on average), with high school graduates having fewer children, and college graduates having the fewest children (1.56 on average).[18]
If you want to dig further, you can also read this paper.
Innovation rates became sufficient for runaway growth in wealth at the end of the 19th century. Subsequent declines in Western genotypic IQ have however diminished innovation rates.
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I had a sandbox as a little boy. I remember how happy I was when my father added sifted sand to the sandbox. It was exactly what I’d wanted all along! :) Back when I’d had unsifted sand, I’d had to use a screen to sift it! :)
Mainstream historians write from the Allied perspective. This means that they seek to present a story of Allied good triumphing over Axis evil. Facts which do not fit into the story they wish to tell are carefully sifted out. It’s possible to read thousands of pages of mainstream history books without encountering anything other than this sifted sand.
But some mainstream/Allied historians are more intense about sifting than others. While some historians make 100% sure that nothing makes it through without being sifted, others allow the occasional pebble to make it through. It’s very rare for these pebbles to escape the sifting process, which is why close attention should be paid to them when they do make it through. Our objective should be to see facts as they actually were, without anyone sifting out data they found inconvenient.
As a result of this sifting process, many have come to believe that Churchill and FDR did not commit genocide, and were heroes for standing up to someone who did (Hitler). Churchill and FDR were guilty of five separate acts of European genocide.
1. The Anglo-American food blockade imposed on Germany during WWII.
2. The Anglo-American bombing effort against German cities.
3. The effort to impose starvation on postwar Germany.
4. The treatment of German POWs, most of whom were turned over to the Soviet Union.
5. The turning over of millions of Soviet refugees and Soviet POWs to the Soviet government.1. The food blockade.
As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe’s 525 million people was dire. With the food supply reduced by 15% by the blockade and another 15% by poor harvests, starvation [was] a threat. . . . Former president Herbert Hoover, who had done much to alleviate the hunger of European children during WW1, wrote
| The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the
| same stage in the [First] World War. … If this war is long continued, there is
| but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history.
Also,
In January Herbert Hoover’s National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies presented the exiled Belgian Government in London with a plan he had agreed with the German authorities to set up soup kitchens in Belgium to feed several million destitute people.[60] . . . However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. . . .
Hoover said that his information indicated that the Belgian ration was already down to 960 calories–less than half the amount necessary to sustain life–and that many children were already so weak they could no longer attend school. . . .
The American Red Cross chartered [mercy ships to carry] relief supplies into unoccupied France. . . . A number of prominent liberals denounced the release of food to France in a letter to United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
2. The Anglo-American bombing effort
One of the objectives of this bombing effort was to reduce Germany’s cities and its people to ash, on the theory that both were contributing to the German war effort. The goal of the late-war Anglo-American bombing raids was to create firestorms. There were times–such as at Hamburg and Dresden–when they succeeded. The bombing of Dresden is especially notable because it had little military value, was a cultural center, and was filled with large numbers of refugees who had fled west to escape the terror and mass murder of the Red Army. In the aftermath of the Dresden raid–and the international outcry against it–Churchill sent the following telegram to the British Chiefs of Staff:
It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land.
The Dresden raid, alone, killed about eight times as many civilians as did the September 11th terrorist attacks. Also, the Dresden raid was specifically targeted against German firefighters and other rescue workers.
It had been decided that the raid would be a double strike, in which a second wave of bombers would attack three hours after the first, just as the rescue teams were trying to put out the fires.[36]
3. The effort to impose starvation on postwar Germany.
On March 20, 1945 President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not workable: it would let the Germans “stew in their own juice”. Roosevelt’s response was “Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!” Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, “Why not?”[47]
By February 28, 1947 it was estimated that 4,160,000 German former prisoners of war, by General Dwight D. Eisenhower relabeled as Disarmed Enemy Forces in order to negate the Geneva Convention, were used as forced labor by the various Allied countries to work in camps outside Germany: 3,000,000 in Russia, 750,000 in France, 400,000 in Britain and 10,000 in Belgium.[70] Meanwhile in Germany large parts of the population were starving[70] at a time when according to a study done by former U.S. President Herbert Hoover the nutritional condition in countries that in Western Europe was nearly pre-war normal".[70]
4. The treatment of German POWs
The highest-scoring fighter ace in human history was Erich Hartmann. As WWII in Europe drew to a close, Hartmann surrendered to the Americans. But then
After his capture, the U.S. Army handed Hartmann, his pilots, and ground crew over to the Soviet Union on 24 May, where he was imprisoned in accordance with the Yalta Agreements, which stated that airmen and soldiers fighting Soviet forces had to surrender directly to them.
Most of Hartmann’s fellow servicemen were less famous and less lucky than he had been. Instead of merely being tortured and starved by the Soviets–as Hartmann had been–many were allowed to die outright.
Finally we arrived near Kirov and disembarked in a swamp. This was our home for a while. Of the 1,500 POWs who were dropped at this place about 200 lived through the first winter. This I know from some who survived. They were not fed, just worked to death.
Millions of other captured German servicemen endured the same fate at Soviet hands. FDR, Truman, and Churchill knew that Stalin was a mass murderer when they decided to turn millions of captured German servicemen over to him.
5. Turning over refugees and POWs from the Soviet Union to the Soviet government
Outlining the plan to forcibly return the refugees to the Soviet Union, this codicil was kept secret from the US and British people for over fifty years.[2] The name of the operation comes from the naval practice of corporal punishment, keelhauling. . . .
The refugee columns fleeing the Soviet-occupied eastern Europe numbered millions of people. . . .
Often prisoners were summarily executed by receiving Communist authorities, sometimes within earshot of the British. . . .
Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Russians. “The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.”[10]
To his credit, Winston Churchill was less enthusiastic about items 3 and 5 on the above list than FDR or Truman had been. Conditions in British-occupied postwar Germany were slightly less bad than the American section. Churchill did not turn over all the refugees he’d agreed to, but allowed some to remain safe from Soviet mass murder. However, FDR, Truman, and Churchill had directly participated in all five of the above-described acts of mass murder in Europe. America’s bombing of Japanese cities–and its use of nuclear weapons against Japan’s civilian population–is of course a separate subject.
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Imagine the sand I could sift, if many moons from now I gave IL’s Eulogy :P.
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These things are all true Kurt but unfortunately you present them in a stand-alone fashion which can be misleading as everything happens in a cause and effect manor. Yes, the allies did all those things, but they didn’t do them on a whim, or because they were in a bad mood or it happened to be Thursday, all these things were done as a direct result of German aggression. You talk about the Anglo-American bombing of German cities but neglect to mention the German bombing of London, and most other major English cities. You talk about the starving Belgians but seem to forget that the reason so many were homeless and destitute was because of the German invasion and occupation of their country. Had Germany not done these things in the first place, or put themselves in those positions, none of the above things would have happened. Germany was in the wrong and reaped what it had sown and I’m sorry but they got back what they had dished out and it doesn’t make sense to me feeling sorry for them because they lost. Even with regards to the Soviet Union, yes Stalin was a mass murderer, but, he was largely killing his own people(I know that statement come with a big pulsing asterisk) where as Hitler was going into other countries and killing their people. Not surprisingly other countries get alittle upset when you do thing like violate their sovereignty and start killing their people.
With regards to the treatment of POW’s, most Germans captured by the western allies were treated very well, and kept in good conditions which isn’t victors history, thats fact. Those “labor camps” of German POW’s you neglect to mention that occupation authorities paid and fed the man that worked for them (the exception being the ones in the Soviet Union). Many of the POW’s that were handed over to the Soviet Union were SS and Members of the Nazi party. From what I read in Col. Hans Von Lucks memoirs(who spent 10 years in Soviet custody), German Heer and Wehrmacht members in general were treated better then members of the SS and Nazi party. Did the US act naively in the face of Stalin and the Soviet Union? Yes. Hind sight is always 20/20, and there are many thing we know today that people at the time had know way of knowing. We also are looking at this with a modern, fresh perspective with different institutions and cultural experiances then the people of that time had. So mistakes were made, what matters isnt that they were made, but whether or not we learn from them.
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You walk into a village, and everyone is wearing wooden shoes. They stare at your leather and rubber boots because you’re obviously a fing idiot. Who the f wears s* like that? In fact, you should probably be burned at the stake just to be safe.
That’s IQ for you. You have a bunch of bullshit questions that are supposed to assess your supposed intelligence. But what the questions REALLY test is how much you think like the person that wrote the test. If you don’t think the same, if you don’t have the same background and thought, you are condemned.
You stupid f*. You f*ing heretic.
My IQ is 250 and I say IQ is a bunch of bullshit. It’s institutionalized provinciality, plain and simple.
Just because I might know about certain Eurocentric history, values, and ideology doesn’t mean I am more INTELLIGENT than someone that has an equivalent of Afrocentric knowledge. Or even, let’s say, someone that instead has a particular understanding of baseball history, or of the development of eastern philosophies.
But apparently it means I AM more intelligent. I have a higher IQ after all. Why don’t I go find some people that think like me and we can all say we’re smarter than everyone else? Hey, let’s make others think they are inferior by publishing the results of our supposedly unbiased tests. Those stupid f*ers can carry our heavy stuff and do our work for us. After all, they’re stupider than we are. We deserve the good stuff in life, we few who know how to think correctly.
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On the topic of mass murder and other stuff -
Life, as most people understand it, must kill to survive. This is a basic principle of nature. Point to the wolf whose jaws are dripping with a rabbit’s blood (eek!). Poor bunny. But how many countless carrots and cabbages has the bunny ravaged? So maybe it is plants that are innocent. But look at any forest that’s been around for a while; why do trees grow taller than others? To rise above other trees to get the nutrients that tree needs. Even trees, even fungus, compete to stay alive.
When you eat a hamburger, you don’t personally go out and hit a cow with a maul, scattering bits of bone, blood, and brain, skin it and dispose of what you don’t like to eat, suspend it for a while so the blood drips out, carve chunks out of the corpse, then painstakingly remove the extra bits of flesh from bone, grind those bits up into a mash, fry that mash up, and pop the result on a bun with pickles. Oh no. You think you are civilized because you don’t have to deal with the whole mess. Because YOU get a hamburger wrapped in a nice bit of paper, with mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, tomato, and lettuce, you are a civilized person that does not kill to get your food. The very thought of killing is abhorrent to you. You are anti-fur and anti-leather. You oppose clubbing baby seals. And yet . . . hamburgers taste good and are convenient, so you eat them. You ignore the blood on your hands!
So if you think about it, if individuals must kill, even indirectly to survive, what can be said of societies? What is it that a society must destroy to survive? And of course, the answer is individuality, even to the point of complete and utter destruction of particular individuals. If you don’t agree with me, then consider the law. Most of the law exists to restrict individual freedoms. Granted, such restrictions are to protect either other individuals or the society at large. But they DO restrict individual freedoms.
So here you are, the product of a particular Westernized society (even Eastern societies are Westernized), thinking you are not a bloody-handed barbarian because your hamburger comes wrapped in a nice bit of paper, and thinking you are civilized because you are TOLD you are civilized. You can ignore the bloody and nasty work that goes into making your hamburger, like you can conveniently ignore the lives that are destroyed and effectively enslaved by the society you live in, even if YOUR life is one of those lives, because it is all walled up nicely by laws and conventions and things like chewing with your mouth closed. Your individual freedoms are being restricted by the society you live in, and more and more of your freedoms, and more and more of the fruits of your labor are being stolen from you, and from the children you may have, even at this moment. But because the oppression is done by uniformed and polite policemen, by lawyers that profess to practice “law and justice”, by politicians that are supposedly doing something for your own good, because all the other cows in the slaughterhouse are walking meekly alongside you, because you don’t see the hammer descending upon you just yet, you meekly go along with it. Oh, you might catch a whiff of blood now and then, and you might roll your eyes and moo once in a while, but you keep going and moving forward, just like you’re supposed to, just like me and pretty much everyone else.
“Animal Farm” is a wonderful and instructional book. But imagine if it had been taken a step further, that pigs were slaughtered and sold for their meat, that there were a regime of pig enforcers, who in turn when getting old and useless were slaughtered for their meat, with only a few pigs escaping the butcher’s block - the few, the elite, the absolute pinnacle of the farmyard society. That is the natural order of things that societies currently devolve into; a natural order that can only be prevented by a regime that includes proper education (by which I do not refer to typical currently approved curriculum.) That is to say, proper education is not ENOUGH, but it is a START - but even that that START is nowhere near being put into action.
But at any rate, what does this have to do with Hitler? Or Stalin? Or whoever else? The fact is, well, let’s face it, death camps are a nasty piece of business. But so is the slaughterhouse that produces hamburgers. Certain leaders in world history decided to go with things that are currently thought of as unpalatable, like mass murder, or book burning, or what have you. Of those, some won, and some lost. Of those that won, they ended up in control of the police and the media, and the majority of the people were pointed away from the blood and the gore from the big slaughterhouses of the past, and away from the current slaughterhouses, and away from the construction sites for future slaughterhouses. The LOSERS, though, had their slaughterhouses flung open to the public, with guided tours “for instructional purposes” set up by the winners. Look at all the unsightly blood and gore! Look at what we have saved you from!
So you can point fingers at the German death camps and say “They killed Jews, how horrible!” Ignoring the fact that such camps were not simply for Jews, but for political dissidents and other discontents. Ignoring the fact that the German war effort required resources to keep running, that food sent to feed the populaces of growing prisoner camps would have been food taken from the mouths of loyal German citizens and soldiers. Ignoring, ignoring, ignoring, because you are TAUGHT to ignore, because the guided tour of the German slaughterhouse and the disgusted noises your tour guides and fellow tourists made during the tour make you think that THEIR solution was barbaric and unacceptable!
Ignoring other offenses committed by the Allies - American concentration camps, or Stalin’s purges, and so forth - what about the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? They were not EVEN outcasts. They were, by any definition, civilians. But it’s OK that they died, no, were murdered, because . . . they were ENEMY civilians. (Like the Germans perhaps saw the Jews). Destroying them helped prevent FRIENDLY SOLDIER DEATHS (like diverting resources from German concentration camps saved German soldiers). But but but. OUR slaughterhouses are examples of justice and mercy. It is THEIR slaughterhouses that are naughty!
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When it comes right down to it, let’s be clear. I don’t condone any sort of slaughterhouse. But I’m not going to point a paw at Hitler and say the final solution wasn’t “sane” according to some weird sensibility I have been propagandized into believing. It was wartime, and sacrifices were made. Distasteful and nasty sacrifices. Everyone’s paws were elbow-deep in blood, everyone was “insane”. Millions of people picked up guns and knives and proceeded to butcher millions of other people holding guns and knives, and almost none of the people holding guns or knives had been personally wronged by any of the other people holding guns or knives. How’s that for a brand of insanity? So a group of people were singled out? How can you point at that and call it insanity, any more than you can go down to the beach, pick out a particular wave, and scream at it?
Although . . . apparently that is EXACTLY what the hot young supermodels are doing these days. Ah, youth. (shakes furry head sadly)
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Take an average man from 1500, who speaks english, and put him up against a modern IQ test. He will more than likely perform MISERABLY.
Take an average man from TODAY, and put him up against a modern IQ test, and he will likely perform average.
Moral of the story? The Tests change and advance, as the technology of the society changes and advances.
Most 6 year old’s can operate a DVD player, but many 60 year olds can not. As society changes, so does what they learn, and what they have to know to survive. Therefore the scale can obviously be skewed one direction or another. If we’re talking about half a . per generation or less… come on.
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You would be speaking Japanese and I would be speaking German.
Yes the difference between book smart and common sence, super smart people who are idiots, and an average person whoi can solve problems that most others cant.
The real smart people lived 100 years ago……they had to do all the math by hand,they also knew how to write,and read, invent things we take for granted.
I remember party lines on our phones, depending on the ring determined if the call was to your house or some one who lived 3 miles away. Both parties had different #'s, and some times 3 places on a pary line. Some times you would pick it up and people would be talking. Can any one explain how that works, let alone design it.
Sorry for rambling -
Well said SA.
Or, ask any 18 yr old kid today, what the difference between a 33, 45, and 72 is.
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Take an average man from 1500, who speaks english, and put him up against a modern IQ test.� He will more than likely perform MISERABLY.
Take an average man from TODAY, and put him up against a modern IQ test, and he will likely perform average.
Moral of the story?� The Tests change and advance, as the technology of the society changes and advances.
Most 6 year old’s can operate a DVD player,� but many 60 year olds can not.� �As society changes, so does what they learn, and what they have to know to survive.� Therefore the scale can obviously be skewed one direction or another.� If we’re talking about half a . per generation or less…� come on.
Totally missed the point. Moral of that story? You figure it out. :wink:
Here’s another story for you.
Give a modern man the IQ test from 1500 AD and he will not only perform miserably. He will perform at such a crappy level, he will actually be considered a danger to himself and others.
Identify poisonous mushrooms? Know how to tan leather so it comes out well? How to properly operate a forge? Fail. Fail fail fail. Can’t make a barrel. Can’t make a cartwheel. Can’t make a gun that can shoot straight, or even hardly at all. Can’t even make a good bow and arrow, for christ’s sake. Completely and totally utterly useless!
So you are saying that as society progresses technologically, that people are inherently becoming more intelligent? The test “advances”? as people “advance”? Give me a break.
The only thing IQ tests measure is how good you are at taking the IQ test. It doesn’t measure intelligence or capacity for reasoning.
Let me give you an example.
Here’s a sequence of numbers.
2. 3. 6. 9. 11.
Get it? Repeat the series to yourself three times.
2. 3. 6. 9. 11.
Now I’m going to give you a series of numbers, and I want you to fill in the blanks.
2. 3. ___ ___ ___.
Now here’s what we’re going to do. You and me and a few other people answered correctly with “6 9 11”. But it seems that a lot of other people don’t understand the natural order of things. A whole lot of those sad morons think for some weird reason that things like “4 5 6” or “5 7 11” or whatever are the right answer. I mean, okay, obviously, they don’t know how to think correctly. I’m not trying to insult them, that’s just how it is. And some of them look funny. Most of them have darker skin, and talk kind of funny, probably because they’re stupid so they don’t understand how to talk properly. It certainly doesn’t sound like English. It maybe sounds like what my cousin’s baby says when it’s had too much to eat.
The funny thing is that some of those poor stupid morons actually seem to think . . . now try not to laugh . . . that they are on the same level as you and me. I can’t tell for sure because I can’t understand what they are trying to say - or rather, I should say they are so poor at making themselves understood. It certainly couldn’t be that I myself would have any problem understanding anything that any REASONABLE person would say!
Since we are good people, you and me, that is, we’re going to be nice and teach those sad pitiful morons the proper order of things. Since we have written the test, it is obviously impartial - and after all, anyone that doesn’t share our opinions is obviously just not worth considering. I mean, I don’t ask my dog’s opinion on how to properly prepare foie gras. Why would I ask something that’s really just a step up from a monkey its opinion, let alone even start to consider the flibbertigibbet that it spouts? It’s laughable, really!
So since we HAVE taken the trouble to administer an IMPARTIAL test of INTELLIGENCE, I think it’s only fair and PROPER, really, that those subhuman morons should understand their place. They should understand that they are not as smart as us, they are not as deserving as us, and as a matter of fact, they are barely fit to carry our luggage and serve us drinks with little umbrellas in them or even to serve as our sex slaves. They should be pathetically grateful and happy for the privilege of serving us; our allowing them to be near us may allow them, in time, to perhaps become a little bit more like us. In fact, it actually disgusts me that we even had to create an impartial intelligence test to demonstrate to everyone what ANYONE whose opinion is worth considering would already know. But we try to be humane to those monkey-like creatures. After all, WE are COMPASSIONATE AND UNDERSTANDING.
This wonderful IQ test has managed to finally sort out - on an IMPARTIAL AND PURELY MERIT-BASED SYSTEM, mind you, the PROPER ORDER OF SOCIETY. And maybe those poor things that look a bit like us but CLEARLY do not have as developed thought capacities as you and me will in time come to understand and accept their rightful place. It might be sad and distasteful, and we might need a few shock prods and manacles to keep them in line at first, but in the end, those darkies and jews and chinks and spics and wops will surely learn to mind and love their Massa.
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Honestly, the provinciality behind so many supposed “sciences” and “impartial observers” astounds me. There were times when it was just accepted that homosexuality was a mental disease, that the black man was inherently inferior to the white man, that the sun went around the earth, that tomatoes were poison that would turn your blood into acid, that lobotomies were a humane form of treatment, that wrong-thinking women only needed a sufficient number of slaps to bring them out of their hysteria, and so on and so forth. And then people look around and say “Look at how far we have come, WE must SURELY be correct!” and then they turn around and do things just as bad, if not worse!
Tell me when in the last two thousand years, that mankind has inherently acquired the ability to eliminate all mistakes! It has not happened! No, each generation thinks IT has reached the culmination and apex of SCIENCE. Astronomy’s apogee with the Pythagorean System! Psychiatry’s apogee with lobotomies! Physical sciences proving black people have smaller monkey-like brains! At each step, everyone thinks they have finally reached the high point of understanding, and subsequent generations always seem to prove them wrong!
So what are the stupidities of this generation? I’d guess in a hundred years, people will count IQ tests among them.
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Rather than dribbling a PAGE of nonsense.
My intention was to imply that the door swings both ways.
My apologies if that was lost, but I couldn’t even read your post :)
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Rather than dribbling a PAGE of nonsense.
My intention was to imply that the door swings both ways.
My apologies if that was lost, but I couldn’t even read your post :)
Ah. Next time I’ll use bananas.
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Anyone who has not yet read Bunnies’ second-most recent post in this thread should immediately do so. It may be long, but it’s well worth the read. You’re much better off reading one post like that than ten standard-issue shorter posts!
Bunnies correctly noted there have been problems associated with IQ testing in the past. Like other scientific fields, psychometrics is still something of a work in progress. Nevertheless, progress is being made. For example, it is no longer necessary to give someone a traditional IQ test to measure his or her IQ. Instead that IQ can be estimated by a physical analysis of the brain: its myelination level (more is better), nerve conduction velocity, the size of the neocortex, etc. Or, someone can be given a reaction time test, with faster reaction times corresponding with higher levels of I.Q. By measuring physical brain characteristics such as myelination levels, or the speed of reaction times, the efficacy of I.Q. tests and their cultural bias can be evaluated.
Unfortunately, psychometrics has sometimes been deliberately been misrepresented to the public, for example by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was raised as a red diaper baby, and as an adult was active in Marxist organizations. He lacked credibility in serious psychometric circles; a fact which did not prevent him from becoming a media darling, or from distorting and twisting psychometric conclusions in his communications with the general public. Nothing Gould has written about psychometrics has been published in any serious journal. Everything he has to say on the subject should be automatically dismissed as Marxist propaganda.
On the subject of war crimes: both sides violated the laws of war during WWII; and each side is responsible for the civilian deaths which resulted from its own violations of the laws of war. FDR and Churchill are responsible for millions of hunger-related deaths which occurred on German-held soil during the war, because they’d used starvation as a weapon against civilians. Had the Axis won the war, it would have been their responsibility to conduct postwar trials, and to execute those responsible for the Allied food blockade. Each of the other four items on my earlier list also constitutes an act of genocide for which those responsible could and should have been executed.
As an aside: over 80% of German military deaths were experienced at Soviet hands. One of the provisions of Yalta required that captured German servicemen be turned over to whichever Allied nation against which they had done the most fighting. This meant that the overwhelming majority of German servicemen were handed over to the Soviets. Unsurprisingly, many would join the long list of victims of Soviet mass murder.
As for the defense that the Germans had it coming: the laws of war apply not just to aggressor nations, but also to nations which respond to aggression. A few years ago, for example, the U.S. launched an aggressive war against Iraq. Suppose, for example, that Hussein had argued that, since the U.S. was the aggressor, the Iraqi government was released from having to follow the laws of war. And was fully justified in pursuing a course of action which would lead to millions of civilian deaths within the U.S. It’s doubtful that a fair and impartial court would find such arguments particularly credible. The Allies’ attempts to justify their own murder of millions of civilians are similarly lacking in credibility.
The fault for the start of WWII is not as cut and dried as some would have us believe. After WWI, the French allowed Poland to occupy a portion of German land, thereby (deliberately?) creating an ongoing bone of contention between Germany and Poland. In May of 1939, this contention was significantly augmented. France promised to launch a general offensive against Germany should the latter attack Poland. The promised French offensive against Germany would force the latter to commit the vast majority of its military strength to its western front. On paper, Franco-Polish forces were stronger than their German counterpart, making a conflict with Germany a very winnable one. Together, Britain and France had much more industrial capacity than Germany; which would give the Allies a commanding advantage in a long war. That advantage would be enhanced by weapons purchases from the United States.
Polish diplomatic policy of 1939 was based on the false notion that France would honor its promise to launch a general offensive against Germany. Guided by this belief, the Polish government adopted an anti-German foreign policy in 1939. The following is a quote from John Toland’s book Adolf Hitler. Toland’s book has been praised by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and Library Journal. (pp. 566 - 567.)
Bernt [a German government official] thought the reported number of German nationals killed by Poles too small and simply added a nought. At first Hitler refused to believe such a large figure but, when Berndt replied that it may have been somewhat exaggerated but something monstrous must have happened to give rise to such stories, Hitler shouted, “They’ll pay for this! Now no one will stop me from teaching these fellows a lesson they’ll never forget! I will not have my Germans butchered like cattle!” At this point Hitler went to the phone and, in Berndt’s presence, ordered Keitel to issue “Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of the War.”
Given that France had absolutely no intention of launching its promised general offensive against Germany, the above-described Polish stance of 1939 was clearly in error. To deliberately antagonize Germany into throwing the first punch makes sense only if you are 100% sure that radical leftist French politicians like Daladier can be trusted to keep their promises. (Promises, incidentally, which had been made in secret.)
In 1938, Hitler had given the Polish a portion of Czechoslovakia’s land, with the expectation that this would encourage Poland to adopt a pro-German foreign policy. Had Daladier not interfered by making false promises to Poland, there is a strong chance Poland would have sided with Germany in its cold war against the Soviet Union. Or, barring that, Poland might at least have maintained a benign neutrality toward Germany. A neutrality similar to that maintained by Spain or Sweden.
I would also like to address the British and Germans’ efforts to bomb each other. In 1940, Germany did not possess a strategic bomber with four engines and four propellers. The vast majority of its bomber force consisted of single engined planes, such as Stuka dive bombers. Stukas proved useful for taking out military targets, such as tanks and soldiers, but lacked the range and payload capacity necessary to be effective strategic bombers. Germany also had a smaller number of two engined medium bombers. These bombers had a longer range and greater payload capacity than Stukas. In a blitzkrieg, these medium bombers would wander behind enemy lines to take out key rail lines and bridges; thereby isolating a targeted pocket of enemy troops. However, not even two engined medium bombers had anywhere near the range or payload capacity of a four engined strategic bomber. Any kind of serious strategic bombing effort required that four engined bomber–exactly the kind of bomber Germany did not have; and which the British and Americans did have. This demonstrates that serious strategic bombing raids had been a major part of British and American prewar plans, and were not necessarily a major part of German prewar thinking. Part of the reason for this was that Germany lacked the industrial capacity for a long war; and so had to try to win quickly via blitzkrieg tactics.
After the fall of France, German bombers attacked military targets in Britain. In the process of this, a few bombers went off course, and some of their bombs fell on civilian areas. Hitler publicly stated this was accidental. Churchill claimed to disbelieve him, and sent multiple retaliatory strikes against German cities. (I have seen it alleged that Churchill knew the bombings were accidental, but chose to lie about them to the British people.) German morale was very low as a result of these strikes. To solve that problem, Hitler decided to engage in retaliatory strikes against British cities. That solved Germany’s morale problem. But it also solved several of Churchill’s problems. German attacks on British cities were far less effective, in military terms, than the attacks on British airfields, sector stations, docks, and other military targets had been. In addition, German attacks against British civilian targets ended all talk of a peace treaty with Germany.
In its entirety, the German bombing effort against Britain cost about 60,000 lives. In a single night of bombing, the Allies would sometimes kill 30,000 or more German civilians. The German strategic bombing of Britain had been more or less thrown together, with planes which had been designed and built with other uses in mind. The Allied bombing of Germany was the result of something premeditated before the war, and of years of industrial production dedicated to making that prewar vision a reality.
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Of course the Allies are controversial, I hope we can al accept that, but there a difference between a blockade( which I am NOT supporting obviously) against an enemy country and the proposed and partially implemented wiping of inferior races from the planet. And I think we’ve all gotten a bit off topic here.
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Kurt, you’re preaching to thew choir here, we all know that things weren’t as black and white as your standard history class/text book/TV documentary leads us to believe. Hell, I go out to WW2 reenactments as a GERMAN solider, Stahlhelm, Adler eagle insignia, K98 and all. So yeah, I get it, the Germans weren’t all that bad, but I really don’t see the need, or reason, to be a fawning apologist for a regime that was a brutal totalitarian dictatorship and more importantly, went kaput sixty-some-odd years ago. Whats the point? What are you going to achieve by falling all over yourself to make excuses and present examples of the “redeeming qualities” of the Nazis? Kurt, you are wasting your, what I perceive to be, substantial talent for research, historical discussion, and adventure into historical hyperbole, on this. No matter the beginning of the topic you seem to lead things in this direction and in the end it goes too far the thread gets closed.
So please my friend, can we talk about something else?
Since this is a thread on “Axis” victory, perhaps a discussion on what a victory would have looked like and ment for the other Axis members, like Japan, or Finland, or my personal favorite, Hungary :-)
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Ah. Next time I’ll use bananas.
That is an acceptable medium.
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What if the axis won world war 2?
Since this is the actual question of this thread, I think I will give answering it a shot.
I have found quite a lot of history that does not match up with the official storyline we were taught in school. You never read in school about Germans being used for slave labor after the war. We are told that we had no idea Japan was coming towards Pearl Harbor even though a mountain of evidence suggests we had to have known.
That said, I think Hitler has been portrayed as too big of a bad guy and may not have done everything ascribed to him, or intended to do many of the things we have been told he would have had Germany won. One such issue is World Domination. Germany put no effort into building strategic bombers, something they would have needed to win if they were seeking global domination.
Certainly Germany had advanced technology, but much like Japan versus The United States, simply not enough manpower or resources to win if the Sleeping Giant decided it wanted to win instead. For Germany to have won, so much had to have changed before the war itself. Germany would have needed to take atomic research seriously and assume that not having it if an allied power did have it, would be unacceptable. Germany would also have needed strategic bombers and the desire to level cities. At no time did Hitler seem interested in crushing Britain prior to the war. He was actually surprised they did not side with him. Churchill is believed to have initially considered Hitler a decent person and his views reasonable. Many in the United States were rooting for Hitler too.
So for me, part of answering this question is to assume that Germany and Japan and Italy had taken steps prior to the war, to win it and not just gain some territory to make their empires larger and stronger.
Had they won, which might only mean they held onto territory they did not have prior to the war and that the allies sued for peace, I think how life would have been different after the war would depend on what territories they were able to hold on to. If Germany had conquered Moscow, Germany would have held on to the Ukraine, the breadbasket of the region and had plenty of food while Russia would have lost this. Oil alone would certainly have helped the Axis. So we have to assume the Axis were able to hold onto the Dutch East Indies, the Caucuses and perhaps even some of the Middle East.
Germany and Japan are considered to have been racist and bigoted nations, however, contrary to how we like to portray ourselves, the United States was plenty racist and bigoted even to the present. Jews were not well liked anywhere in the world. Blacks were considered inferior. Asians were pretty much considered inferior too. Unless you were White European, you were not going to be treated well and so I am not sure how much reaction anyone would have given to Germany or Japan removing or exterminating whole groups of peoples if those groups were considered of lesser value by Allied nations to begin with?
There may have been an “awakening” at some point. We had the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, but not for twenty years after WWII ended, and even then the Blacks were not treated all that well. Today we still imprison and subject them to state-sanctioned murder by police daily without doing anything about it. So I just don’t see a huge uproar occurring in the 40’s or even 50’s to have changed how Japan or Germany treated people they conquered. The Rape of Nanking only got press because we wanted to get into the war. Otherwise I highly doubt most Americans were all that concerned about the treatment of Chinese. Nobody did a whole lot to condemn Britain’s treatment of the peoples of India which had gone on unabated for 350 years. And only 50 years prior the US had slaughtered the Native American’s. So if people want to argue that Hitler was somehow some crazed madman who wanted to kill or remove groups of peoples from his lands and that this was somehow unique and unheard of… It just isn’t accurate. But it is hard to unite people to go to war and follow the flag without a really good villain. And if you commit a lot of atrocities during the war yourself, it is always handy when you are the victor, to write the history in such a way as to make it seem like you were fighting evil. When in fact, Hitler’s idea of war and conquest and race and religion was not much different than it had been viewed by humanity the two thousand years before. And in many ways, you could argue the decades after WWII.
Someone else mentioned that the Cold War would have been multifaceted and not just the US versus Soviet Union. That would certainly have been more true had Germany and Japan and Italy won. Past that, I doubt much else would have changed. It would have just been different actors doing much of what was done anyway after WWII. There would have been just as many “little wars” all over the world as each power tried to go after their little interests. Plenty of puppet dictators everywhere. No less bloodshed. The United would still have sought an empire for itself and depending on the alliances elsewhere in the world, we might have done it with Germany’s help or Japan’s help or the UK, or we might have gone it alone. It would depend on what we did during WWII. I just can’t see us not winning if we were involved though. We simply had too many resources, too much manpower and too much money to have been beaten by Germany or Japan. But if either of them had gotten nukes, that alone would have changed the outcome. I just can’t see us suing for peace. Because we never needed to. We were always going to win.
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Kurt, the first source you cited is Wikipedia. I like it and use it as one of many sources, academia on the other hand doesn’t like it so much. So, back to your first article, the first thing I read was a disclaimer at the top. Moreover, they are requesting citations.
“The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (July 2011)”
Your second citation, the second sentence contradicts your assertion that IQ is declining over the years, in fact in increased from 1455 to 1850. I am not sure what that premise is then used for in your attempt at a logically valid argument.
" It is found that two alternative genotypic IQ estimates based on an increase in IQ from 1455 to 1850 followed by a decrease from 1850 to the present"
Moreover the article is most often cited by more racially charged sites such as the following:
http://racehist.blogspot.ca/2009/04/natality-data-rates-of-interbreeding.html
Intelligence, Volume 32, Issue 2, March-April 2004, Pages 193-201
Richard Lynn, Marian Van CourtYou cited a paper by Marian Van Court. Her name appears on lists of alleged racists.
http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?11,10118
I am not sure what your bottom line conclusion is Kurt.
Are you asserting there is a superior form of Homo Sapien (Whie/Aryan) and an inferior one (other)? That interbreeding of good humans and bad versions of humans is reducing the average IQ of humans?
If the axis powers won the war and the Nazis remained in power in Germany then there would be precious few European “inferior” humans left to pollute the strain of the ‘good’ versions of humans.
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So if people want to argue that Hitler was somehow some crazed madman who wanted to kill or remove groups of peoples from his lands and that this was somehow unique and unheard of… It just isn’t accurate.
Do attrocities need to be unique? And besides, I would call extermination camps on that scale unique.
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I don’t call them unique, the only thing Unique is the fact they didn’t use them as forced labor first. does Modern society look badly at the Egyptians for doing the same thing to build their Pyramids? They worked there slaves to death, or does Modern Society still hold USA accountable for it History in the Slave trade? Black slaves were not always treated Humanely, Just look how they were treated crossing the Atlantic before they even got to US Soil. How About when Japan was trying to go Modern and their treatment of their thousand year old Samurai ways?
The Chinese used Slaves to Build their Great Wall, and Yet modern Society looks at it as a Ancient Triumph of Engineering. I bet the people who were forced to build it did not think it was such a Great thing, but more like a Death Camp.I am not saying I agree with what was done, but it is done. The only reason people or modern Society looks so terribly at Nazism and their Pure race attitude, is because it is the most recent in history and there are people still alive who were there.
Now back on topic
The Axis would have only won the war if Russia had joined Japan and Germany with their Eurasian treaty.
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Exactly, they weren’t a labor force, that was my point as to being unique.