If I am banned for expressing the view that the communists were significantly worse than the Nazis, it would indicate to me that one or more list moderators subscribe to the latter philosophy. I would then go about finding another WWII forum run by people who adhere to the former perspective.
Which would be too great a loss for this site and greatly diminish the level of intelegent discourse on this site in the WW2 forums.
I can see and understand what you mean, I too often sympathize with the German solider and the German army, but I have no sympathy for Hitler and is Nazi party. What they did was far worse then any of that “Stabbed in the Back” nonsense from WW1. Hitler and his party did more to stab the German army and solider in the back with their idiodic occupation policies (one of the biggest factors to Germay’s defeat IMO) and their equally stupid racial superiority theories. I know Stalin and his “communist” cornies were just as bad as Hitler and his Nazi party, most people here know this, no one is disputing this, but like Gamerman said it’s like arguing if you’d rather be shot and hung, either way you end up dead! Hitler and his Nazi’s were defeated by the Soviets in the end because the reaped what the had sowen in their occupation of Russian lands. Had a more moderate policy been used maybe things would have been different. Hitler and his Nazi party are forever stained by the horros they unleashed during WW2 and no matter how terrible Stalin was people are not going to believe the “lesser of two evil” argument.
If thats what were doing here, then I say screw Hitler and Stalin and say go Cthulhu, why choose the lesser of two evils� :wink:
Thanks Clyde. I appreciate the compliments you and gamerman have given me. I also appreciate Gargantua’s recent post on my behalf.
To address your point about German occupation policy within the Soviet Union: there was division within the Nazi Party about whether the German occupation of Soviet territory should be benign or harsh. Ultimately those advocating a benign occupation lost the power struggle, leading to a harsh occupation policy. In contrast, Germany’s leaders from WWI had chosen a benign occupation policy for the eastern lands they occupied. That policy was part of the events which convinced the people of the Ukraine that “Bad things come from Russia, good things come from Germany.”
One of the Nazis’ main reasons for invading the Soviet Union in the first place was to obtain the food necessary to avert starvation in Germany and German-occupied Western Europe. It’s possible that the Nazi leaders concluded that, if they permitted widespread starvation to occur in German-held Soviet lands, they would be seen as dire enemies no matter what else they did. Ruling by fear may have seemed like their only practical option. I acknowledge that their racial ideology almost certainly contributed to this decision. They probably saw Slavs as cowardly and easily intimidated. (Such views would have been reinforced by the Red Army’s abysmal performance in its 1940 Winter War against Finland.)
Also, if Germany’s food situation was such that millions of people would starve to death no matter what course Hitler chose, he certainly would have preferred those millions to be Slavic rather than German.
More generally, I would break the Nazi ideology down into three components:
Love for Germans and other Nordic peoples Indifference or even contempt for most non-Germanic/non-Nordic people (such as Slavs) Hatred towards the JewsThe Nazis were at their worst when acting upon the third of these components; and at their best when motivated by the first component. As an example of the latter, Hitler instituted improved workplace safety standards, improved clean air and clean water standards, reduced the unemployment rate to close to zero, significantly increased wages for German workers, greatly increased their vacation time, reduced the workweek to 40 hours, and arranged for government-subsidized cruises so that those workers could see the world. He also led an anti-smoking campaign which significantly reduced the rate of tobacco use within Germany. The Nazis encouraged physical exercise; and arranged for groups of adults to exercise together. German children who grew up in the '30s were consistently well-fed and in good physical condition. This contrasted with the poorer classes of English society–so strong a contrast that even someone as strongly biased as William Shirer noted it.
Another point worth mentioning is genetics. In nature, animals tend to have large numbers of offspring, only some of which survive to have offspring of their own. The fittest animals are most likely to be among the survivors, leading to upward genetic pressure. That source of upward genetic pressure has largely vanished for humans. Instead, the human gene pool is changing based primarily on the number of children individual people decide to have.
I have seen a Nazi propaganda poster which lamented the fact that intelligent, law-abiding people were having far fewer children than their less intelligent law-abiding counterparts, who in turn were having fewer children than unintelligent criminals. Communists have taken the opposite view of this situation. Karl Marx thought that individual differences were determined almost entirely through environmental factors. The communist movement would move even further in that direction.
Lysenko [caused] the expulsion, imprisonment, and death of hundreds of scientists and eliminating all study and research involving Mendelian genetics throughout the Soviet Union.
Mendelian genetics is the only scientifically credible form of genetics. The Stalin/Lysenko persecution of geneticists represented an attack on science–a far more severe attack, at least in terms of body count, than anything the Catholic Church had done to Galileo.
While communists have since backed away from Lamarckist quackery, they have continued to promote an anti-scientific, “yes, but” approach to genetic science. “Yes, Mendelian genetics theory is true, but it doesn’t do much to explain differences between humans.” “Yes, Mendelian genetic theory may apply to humans, but it does little to explain differences in human intelligence.” That sort of thing. Communists have violently opposed efforts to improve–or even arrest the decline of–the human gene pool, on the theory that such efforts are Nazi-like. Despite vast amounts of scientific evidence to the contrary, communists continue to claim that intellectual differences between individuals are caused almost entirely by environmental factors.
Upward genetic pressure, applied over time, caused apes to evolve into humans. Downward genetic pressure, such as we are now witnessing, will cause humans to . . . ?
I would argue that, to deal with current and future challenges and threats, the human race requires two things. 1) Ability. 2) Willingness to work together, and to sacrifice for a larger cause. Communists’ anti-scientific notions about genetics, in combination with the current decline in the gene pool, represent a direct, immediate threat to the first of these two things. Communists’ racial theories and racial objectives are a serious threat to the second.
Ants are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the colony because they are genetically similar to the colony’s other ants. What is true for ants is also true for humans: people are willing to sacrifice more for their own children than they are for other people’s children. Adopted children are four times more likely to be abused, despite the fact that adoptive parents are screened, whereas people who want to have and raise their own biological children are not.
During the rise of the Roman Republic, individual soldiers were willing to sacrifice themselves for Rome. Government officials often placed law and honor above their own self-interest. During the decline of the Roman Empire, these things had ceased to be the case. Bribery was the norm rather than the exception. The phrase “Roman soldiers” had become almost an oxymoron: few if any real Romans were willing to fight for Rome. The definition of what a “Roman” was had become blurred. By this point, Rome had become what may (for its time) have been the most multicultural city in human history. “All roads lead to Rome.” Large numbers of people from widely disparate places had congregated in Rome.
Scientific studies have shown that people are happier and more altruistic when in homogenous workplaces than they are in racially diverse workplaces. Rome’s loss of its homogeneity and its loss of altruism were almost certainly not coincidental factors. Other places which have become racially mixed–such as Latin America–are also, like the dying Roman Empire, associated with high levels of government corruption, and a low level of military effectiveness.
Based on this scientific evidence and on this track record, it would make far more sense to preserve the existence of race, than it would to support communists in their goal of globalizing and destroying race. There may come a time when it is critical for humanity’s future that large groups of people work together to achieve a greater purpose. If or when that time comes, we will need to have better institutions than existed in the declining Roman Empire or in Latin America to deal with such challenges.
