National Socialism vs. Communism.

@Imperious:

That is not my point at all.

Then why do you keep making statements that support that view? You do nothing to ignore statements about German crimes, then recent what the Western Allies did/ Soviets did and downplay what the GERMANS DID.

It’s ok if your revisionist, but at least admit it. It happens to be a point of view that few support in light of the facts.

Imperious Leader wrote:

Then why do you keep making statements that support that view?

I don’t. There was no moral equivalence between the Nazis and the Soviets. The Soviets were morally inferior to the Nazis, and by a wide margin. The statements I make are in support of that thesis, and in opposition to any kind of moral equivalence thesis.

You do nothing to ignore statements about German crimes, then recent what the Western
Allies did/ Soviets did and downplay what the GERMANS DID.

The Germans were guilty of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of murders during the prewar period. The Soviets were guilty of tens of millions of mass murders during that same time. The reason I place such importance on that dichotomy is that there were no extenuating circumstances. No brutal military necessities to consider, no food blockades forcing the extermination or starvation of some group of people. Anything that occurred in the prewar period was straight up mass murder, period.

By the same token, there were no extenuating circumstances for the crimes the Allies committed in the postwar era. Any act of mass murder they committed during that period–such as the Morgenthau Plan–was every bit as unjustified as anything which occurred in the prewar period. However, because no major Axis government survived into the postwar period, one cannot compare postwar murders the way I’ve compared prewar murders above. I will simply state that the Allies murdered millions (or possibly tens of millions) of innocent people during the postwar era, and leave it at that.

It’s ok if your revisionist, but at least admit it.

“Revisionism,” at least in a WWII-specific context, is often taken to mean denial of the Holocaust, and an effort to downplay the immense suffering Jews endured during WWII. Such revisionism is often seen as intellectually dishonest. The video footage of skeletal concentration camp inmates offers concrete proof that the Jews endured immense hardship under Nazi rule.

The Holocaust happened, and millions of Jews died as a result. But rather than putting 100% of the blame for that on the Nazis, I tend to point out that the Allied food blockade made it impossible for the Nazis to feed everyone within their borders. The Allied leaders knew that their food blockade would cause immense suffering among civilians. They couldn’t necessarily be 100% sure that such suffering would be born so disproportionately by the Jews. But they knew that their food blockade would kill someone. That’s what famine does. That’s what their artificially created famine was intended to do. If the Allied leaders were willing to admit that they were murderous thugs willing to stoop to any measure at all to win a war, that would be one thing. But the fact they’ve presented themselves as saints is nauseatingly sanctimonious and hypocritical.

I’d like to expand on a point I made in my previous post.

A long time ago, Europeans (primarily Dutch) had established colonies in South Africa. They’d been there for generations, and thought of South Africa as their home.

Unfortunately for them, gold was discovered. Britain immediately took an interest in these Boer (Dutch) colonies. After the Boers refused Britain’s demands to allow in large numbers of British immigrants, Britain chose to annex the colonies outright. In an effort to dehumanize the intended victims of their aggression, the British began referring to the Boers as “white savages.”

The Boer War occurred around the turn of the century. The first phase was a conventional war between the British and the Boers. The British won that first phase quickly and decisively. The war then entered its second phase, which consisted of guerrilla war against the British invaders. The British responded to the Boers’ guerrilla tactics by rounding up large numbers of Boer civilians and placing them in concentration camps. Click here to see a picture of Lizzie Borden, an inmate of Britain’s concentration camps.

The British government later admitted to interring nearly 100,000 inmates in its concentration camps, of whom 28,000 died of starvation and related causes. Of those, 24,000 victims were children under 16–representing half of the Boers’ child population.

The Boer War was a notable event in the life of a young journalist named Winston Churchill. It’s how Churchill first came to the attention of the British public.

According to an entry from the Diary of Anne Frank, dated 1941, the British government had already begun accusing the Nazis of exterminating the Jews. According to another source, Britain’s accusations began even earlier than the diary entry had indicated–in 1940. According to some other sources I’ve seen, the Holocaust did not begin until 1942. Assuming those sources are accurate, why did Britain’s Holocaust propaganda effort begin two full years before the Holocaust itself began?

During WWII, the American government rounded up recent German and Italian immigrants, as well as Americans of Japanese descent, and placed them in concentration camps. American political leaders felt the loyalty of those groups was far from reassured. Hitler felt the same way about Germany’s Jewish population, and placed the German Jews in concentration camps as well.

Due to its actions in the Boer War, the British government had institutional experience with concentration camps. They knew that once a government begins placing people in concentration camps, those people are far more vulnerable to famine conditions than is the general population. For one thing, people in concentration camps will typically be lowest on the government’s priority list. Also, people in concentration camps can have access only to food the government physically controls. (As opposed to food grown by peasants which hadn’t been physically seized by the German government.)

I am about to present a scenario as a possibility. What I’m about to describe is not a certainty–but neither is it anything I’ve (thus far) been able to rule out.
1. The British government correctly predicted that the Germans would not agree to Britain’s (nonexistent) peace proposals.
2. The British government realized the war would go on for years.
3. They also knew that the longer the war lasted, the more severe the effects of their food blockade would become.
4. They correctly predicted that Germany’s Jewish population would be among the most prominent victims of the famine the blockade had created.
5. Realizing this, they chose not to open Palestine or any other colony to Jewish immigration. Nor did they allow food through their blockade. Nor, in early 1941, did they allow Herbert Hoover to send food to starving Belgian children.
6. Instead of doing anything to alleviate the starvation their blockade was causing, their instinct was to turn the situation to maximum political advantage. The Holocaust became the centerpiece of the anti-Nazi propaganda effort.

Imagine that Jack sets Bill’s house on fire. Bill saves his biological children from the flames, but is unable to save his adopted children. “You are a murderer,” Jack says to Bill. “You killed your adopted children.” Jack doesn’t say anything about the fire. He hopes people forget there was a fire. If anyone questions Jack’s logic, he responds with, “Bill owned the house. It was his responsibility to keep those children safe. If he couldn’t even do that, he should never have acquired the house in the first place. The responsibility for those children’s deaths is his, and his alone. Anyone who says different is a revisionist and a liar.”

I’d like to expand on a point I made in my previous post

Kurt,

I would like you to continue expanding on your points. :)  This is interesting stuff!

Then why do you keep making statements that support that view?

I don’t. There was no moral equivalence between the Nazis and the Soviets. The Soviets were morally inferior to the Nazis, and by a wide margin. The statements I make are in support of that thesis, and in opposition to any kind of moral equivalence thesis.

You do nothing to ignore statements about German crimes, then recent what the Western
Allies did/ Soviets did and downplay what the GERMANS DID.

The Germans were guilty of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of murders during the prewar period. The Soviets were guilty of tens of millions of mass murders during that same time. The reason I place such importance on that dichotomy is that there were no extenuating circumstances. No brutal military necessities to consider, no food blockades forcing the extermination or starvation of some group of people. Anything that occurred in the prewar period was straight up mass murder, period.

By the same token, there were no extenuating circumstances for the crimes the Allies committed in the postwar era. Any act of mass murder they committed during that period–such as the Morgenthau Plan–was every bit as unjustified as anything which occurred in the prewar period. However, because no major Axis government survived into the postwar period, one cannot compare postwar murders the way I’ve compared prewar murders above. I will simply state that the Allies murdered millions (or possibly tens of millions) of innocent people during the postwar era, and leave it at that.

And you keep doing it. The first thing you did was ignore the comment or rebuttal about how the Western Allies really did nothing, which is true and focus on Soviet Atrocities. Then you make a general blanket statement about German crimes and go back just what the Soviets did.

I will simply state that the Allies murdered millions (or possibly tens of millions) of innocent people during the postwar era, and leave it at that.

Ok and you just make blanket claims now. Where is proof that the Western Allies killed tens of millions of people? You were better off just ignoring German crimes and blaming the Allies for a rudimentary economic blockade of the axis, which the axis attempted to do with USW. Somehow that blockade ranks equal in your mind to all the crimes of Germany? OMG what a reach

Imperious Leader wrote,

Where is proof that the Western Allies killed tens of millions of people?

During the war, there was widespread hunger and starvation in German-occupied Europe. While there were a number of reasons for the food shortage, the primary cause was the Allied food blockade.

Also during the war, Britain and the U.S. engaged in extermination bombing raids targeted against German cities. As Chuck Yeager pointed out in his autobiography, some American pilots were told to fly around the German countryside and “shoot anything that moves.” This represented exactly the same mentality the Allies demonstrated in Dresden, Hamburg, and other German cities, except that their targets were more spread out.

At this point in the discussion, there will be those who try to explain away Allied war crimes or (worse) to shift the blame for those crimes to Germany. As someone who’s partly of Polish descent, and whose grandfather served in the Polish military during WWII, the latter attitude greatly irks me. Millions of Poles–my relatives–starved to death as a direct, foreseeable result of the Allied food blockade. And yet people act like the Allies did nothing wrong–like those millions of Polish lives–and the even greater number of non-Polish lives–lost didn’t matter.

As for the idea that the Allied blockade was somehow “economic”–it’s true that the Allies blocked oil, metal, and other supplies that a blockade should block. But they also blocked food. Not only did they block food to Germany directly. They also prevented neutral European nations bordering Germany from importing more food than necessary to compensate for their own food deficits. The intention was to prevent those neutral nations from acquiring any sort of food surplus which could be sold to Germany. The sole intention of the Allied food blockade was to use hunger as a weapon with which to kill large numbers of innocent people.

Throughout human history, government typically feed their own citizens first, before feeding the residents of occupied territories. In choosing to prioritize the feeding of Germans over the feeding of Poles, the German government did not do anything criminal, or out of the ordinary. The “out of the ordinary” thing was the Western democratic willingness to take a brutal, medieval tactic–starving an enemy castle into submission–and to apply that tactic to an entire continent. The Polish were among the foremost victims of that blockade, thereby demonstrating the emptiness of the Allies’ claims that they wanted to “help” Poland. The starvation of millions of Poles was completely avoidable, and almost certainly would have been avoided had the Allies not imposed their murderous, sadistic food blockade.

You’d think that with so many deaths on their hands during the war, the Western democracies’ blood lust would have been sated. But no. There was plenty of more Western democratic killing after the war was over. Exhibit A was the Morgenthau Plan, a plan intended to starve large numbers of Germans to death after the war. In this it largely succeeded. The degree of its success has not been widely studied due to the political sensitivity of the issue. However, one historian estimated that the resultant death toll was 6 million. His estimate may or may not be accurate; and it would be nice if the issue could be more widely studied in an environment free from politically-based arm twisting.

Another instance of Western democratic postwar murder was Operation Keelhaul. There are some who excuse the mass murder of millions of Germans during the Morgenthau Plan (JCS 1067), on the theory that “the Germans had it coming.” Such excuses cannot be used to explain away Operation Keelhaul, because the victims of Keelhaul were not Germans. They were refugees from the Soviet Union. Britain and the U.S. agreed to transfer Soviet refugees–all 5 million of them–into Soviet custody, regardless of consent. Not all the refugees were necessarily killed immediately upon being received by Soviet authorities. Many were transferred to gulags, and it’s possible that some small minority of those made it out alive.

A third Western democratic war crime was the transfer of large numbers of captured German servicemen to Soviet custody after the war was over. I have already described the Soviets’ willingness to murder those servicemen in a previous post, so there is no need for me to go into that here.

I have yet to encounter anything which would remotely suggest that the leader of any major Western democracy was worth the bullet it would have taken to shoot him. Not Daladier, with his lies to Poland about a French general offensive within 10 days of mobilization. Not Chamberlain, with his decision to go along with French lies–and to start a world war–in order to punish Germany for having made him look bad at Munich. Not Churchill, with his warmongering, extermination bombing, and sheer enthusiasm for an unjust war which had never, ever been intended to help Poland. Nor FDR, with his unbridled narcissism, and his chilling eagerness to do whatever it took to make friends with Joseph Stalin. Up to and including becoming a direct, willing, eager participant in acts of postwar Soviet mass murder. Nor Truman, who with his complete absence of any sort of moral compass was perfectly willing to pick up where FDR had left off. These were some very, very evil people.

During the war, there was widespread hunger and starvation in German-occupied Europe. While there were a number of reasons for the food shortage, the primary cause was the Allied food blockade.

The War? You mean the one Hitler started? Yea blame the Allies for blockading the Baltic from a war of extermination started by Germany where she just plunders countries and kills off the population. Yea point out the Allies and what they did. Your reasoning again is ridiculous, but keep expanding it for whatever value you can.

Also during the war, Britain and the U.S. engaged in extermination bombing raids targeted against German cities. As Chuck Yeager pointed out in his autobiography, some American pilots were told to fly around the German countryside and “shoot anything that moves.” This represented exactly the same mentality the Allies demonstrated in Dresden, Hamburg, and other German cities, except that their targets were more spread out.

Germany didn’t bomb England? Germany didn’t bomb Poland? Germany didn’t bomb France? Germany didn’t bomb Rotterdam? Germany didn’t bomb Russia? Germany didn’t bomb Yugoslavia? Germany didn’t bomb Greece?  Germany didn’t bomb Malta? Germany didn’t bomb Crete? Germany didn’t bomb Norway?

As for the idea that the Allied blockade was somehow “economic”–it’s true that the Allies blocked oil, metal, and other supplies that a blockade should block. But they also blocked food. Not only did they block food to Germany directly. They also prevented neutral European nations bordering Germany from importing more food than necessary to compensate for their own food deficits. The intention was to prevent those neutral nations from acquiring any sort of food surplus which could be sold to Germany. The sole intention of the Allied food blockade was to use hunger as a weapon with which to kill large numbers of innocent people.

You’d think that with so many deaths on their hands during the war, the Western democracies’ blood lust would have been sated. But no. There was plenty of more Western democratic killing after the war was over. Exhibit A was the Morgenthau Plan, a plan intended to starve large numbers of Germans to death after the war. In this it largely succeeded. The degree of its success has not been widely studied due to the political sensitivity of the issue. However, one historian estimated that the resultant death toll was 6 million. His estimate may or may not be accurate; and it would be nice if the issue could be more widely studied in an environment free from politically-based arm twisting.

Throughout human history, government typically feed their own citizens first, before feeding the residents of occupied territories. In choosing to prioritize the feeding of Germans over the feeding of Poles, the German government did not do anything criminal, or out of the ordinary. The “out of the ordinary” thing was the Western democratic willingness to take a brutal, medieval tactic–starving an enemy castle into submission–and to apply that tactic to an entire continent. The Polish were among the foremost victims of that blockade, thereby demonstrating the emptiness of the Allies’ claims that they wanted to “help” Poland. The starvation of millions of Poles was completely avoidable, and almost certainly would have been avoided had the Allies not imposed their murderous, sadistic food blockade.

But in Germany’s she just plundered France and all her other conquests of foodstuffs and people who could be forced to work in her Labor camps, or just get killed. then you say :

With  “the German government did not do anything criminal, or out of the ordinary” you made another ridiculous statement. The Poles where forced into labor camps, Killed, and or forced into Ghettos. The Western Allies didn’t put anybody in forced labor, or kill them. The poles were doing just fine before Germany plundered Poland and starved them and whom latter raised keyboard commandos to argue the most ludicrous points of reasoning imaginable. If Germany was so concerned about Poland, she would have left her alone. So don’t freaking blame the outcome of what happens to Germany after she started the war. Next you will argue that the war was forced on Germany, just like Hitler did.

The starvation of millions of Poles was completely avoidable, and almost certainly would have been avoided had the Allies not imposed their murderous, sadistic food blockade.

To reason like this is really sad. you ignore the fact that Germany invaded Poland and Poland did nothing to deserve that, then blame the Allies again? Dude your either a Nazi or the next best thing?

The rest of your point is just more faulty reasoning. Volumes of words don’t make points or the truth. I’m done with you.

Imperious Leader wrote:

you ignore the fact that Germany invaded Poland and Poland did nothing to deserve that, then blame the Allies again?

Once the war started, there was no way Poland was going to avoid hostile foreign occupation. An Axis victory would have meant a German-occupied Poland. An Allied victory would have meant a Soviet-occupied Poland. WWII was never about Polish freedom–it was about who its hostile foreign occupiers would be.

Knowing that Poland would be subject to hostile foreign occupation regardless of who won or lost the war, the question then becomes: what (if anything) could the Western democracies do to influence conditions in occupied Poland? In 1939, Britain and France imposed a food blockade on Germany. In doing so, they made the starvation of millions of Poles an absolute certainty. They could have chosen to allow food through their naval blockade, in which case widespread starvation would most likely not have happened in Poland.

You seem to think that the German invasion of Poland excuses the Allied food blockade. It does not. Life for Poland was going to be bad enough already, without the Allies adding mass starvation to Poland’s other problems.

Also–to be blunt–Germany was not the only country to have invaded Poland. The Soviet Union also invaded Poland in 1939–the second time in as many decades that it did so. The Western democracies showed no more interest in stopping the second Soviet invasion of Poland than they had in stopping the first.

You will recall that many Poles escaped to Britain, where they continued fighting against the Axis. After WWII ended, a pro-Soviet British Labour government denied those Poles the chance to participate in the victory parade. Perhaps that’s fitting. A Soviet-occupied postwar Poland was hardly a legitimate reason for Polish celebration.

If Germany was so concerned about Poland, she would have left her alone.

No one was concerned about what happened to Poland. The Soviets were not concerned: they were evil invaders and hostile foreign occupiers. From 1939 - 1941, the population of the eastern half of Poland was literally decimated. One Pole out of every ten was either shot outright, sent to a gulag, or otherwise deported. Recall that the Soviets had no food shortage, making these killings entirely capricious.

Germany was not concerned at all about Poland. They were consistently upfront about the fact that their foreign policy was based on what they considered best for Germany.

The Western democracies had no, zero, zilch interest in helping Poland whatsoever. What makes their contempt for the Poles different from German or Soviet contempt is that the Western democracies awarded themselves credit for standing up for Poland. Their entire justification for going to war was based on the idea that they wanted to “help” Poland stand up to the German bully. Instead of doing that, Daladier deliberately lied to Poland about French military intentions in order to get Poland to pursue an anti-German foreign policy in the first place. Having deliberately misled his “ally,” and having placed it in a completely false position, Daladier–together with Chamberlain–proceeded to impose a food blockade on Germany starting in the very first month of the war. A food blockade which would ultimately kill millions of Poles.

You seem to think that I should be blaming Germany for the Western democracies’ crimes against Poland. Why would I do that? Hitler wasn’t the one who chose to impose a food blockade against Germany. Hitler wasn’t the one who chose to lie to Poland about whether France would launch a general offensive. Hitler wasn’t the one who felt that a Soviet-occupied postwar Poland would be perfectly acceptable. Yes, Hitler was guilty of his own crimes against Poland. But a discussion of Hitler’s anti-Polish crimes does not (as you seem to think) justify the absolutely despicable way in which the Western democracies treated Poland.

@Imperious:

With  “the German government did not do anything criminal, or out of the ordinary” you made another ridiculous statement.

Please don’t quote selectively to advance your argument/reduce your opponent’s. The statement was:
@KurtGodel7:

In choosing to prioritize the feeding of Germans over the feeding of Poles, the German government did not do anything criminal, or out of the ordinary.

This does not say that the Germans did nothing wrong in their other actions against the Poles, Jews, and other Eastern European people (as your quote implies). It says that feeding your own people first is a normal response in wartime.
Had India somehow been a part of the British Isles, I highly doubt that the British would have tried to feed everyone equally while under Germany’s USW. And I highly doubt you would blame the British for the Indians’ starvation.

@ColonelCarter:

Had India somehow been a part of the British Isles, I highly doubt that the British would have tried to feed everyone equally while under Germany’s USW. And I highly doubt you would blame the British for the Indians’ starvation.

Actually there was a famine in India in 1943 with between 1m and 3m deaths. Snippet from Wikipedia:

Any imports would have had to come from Australia, North America or South America. Some supplies from Australia entered the region.[63] The main constraint was shipping. The Battle of the Atlantic was at its peak from mid-1942 to mid-1943, with submarine wolf packs sinking so many ships that the Allies were on the verge of defeat, so shipping could not be spared for India.[64]

By August 1943 Churchill refused to release shipping to send food to India.[65][66][67] Initially during the famine he was more concerned with the civilians of Nazi occupied Greece (who were also suffering from a famine) compared with the Bengalis,[68] noting that the “starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks”.

Which brings us back to the Allies not being perfect, faced as they were with such challenging decisions, Churchill’s failings being embarrassingly evident in this example. But that does not stop Churchill being a great leader, nor suggest any (im)moral equivalence with the Nazis’ policy of genocide.

Private Panic wrote,

Actually there was a famine in India in 1943 with between 1m and 3m deaths.

A good contribution to the discussion.

When Churchill was told about the famine, he made a flippant remark about Gandhi not yet having starved to death. There was something about Gandhi which really got under Churchill’s skin. He also seemed irritated by the fact that Gandhi hadn’t starved to death, despite Indian food shortages and Gandhi’s own self-imposed fasts.

But that does not stop Churchill being a great leader, nor suggest any (im)moral equivalence with the Nazis’ policy of genocide.

Winston Churchill fought an unnecessary, unjust war which resulted in Soviet hegemony over the vast bulk of Europe. Including Poland–the nation the Allies supposedly went to war to save.

Was Churchill guilty of genocide? Yes, absolutely. But the millions of victims of famine in India should not be counted among his genocidal victims, any more than the millions of Slavs who starved to death in Nazi-occupied Europe were victims of Nazi genocide.

@KurtGodel7:

Was Churchill guilty of genocide? Yes, absolutely. But the millions of victims of famine in India should not be counted among his genocidal victims, any more than the millions of Slavs who starved to death in Nazi-occupied Europe were victims of Nazi genocide.

Of course you know that I disagree with that utterly KG. Churchill did not set out to exterminate any race, religion or nationality. The Nazis did. Genocide. Definition:

“the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group”

@KurtGodel7:

Winston Churchill fought an unnecessary, unjust war which resulted in Soviet hegemony over the vast bulk of Europe. Including Poland–the nation the Allies supposedly went to war to save.

The outcomes of the war did include Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe including Poland. Looking at outcomes as a whole rather than only in part we should remember that these also included democratic free peoples across western Europe.

As I have said before in this thread, a war against an aggressor, which represented a strategic threat to the beleaguered democracies and which pursued a policy of genocide and other heinous crimes is a just war.

Recognising that the UK & US were not perfect and that the Soviets were awful does not change that fact.

I understand your desire, KG, to highlight the Allies’ shortcomings. The victors write the history and the truth must come out. But you take a worthwhile cause and then undermine your argument by drawing conclusions every bit as one-sided as those who presented us with the Allies perfect / Nazis evil picture in the first place.

Private Panic wrote,

Churchill did not set out to exterminate any race, religion or nationality.

Whether or not that’s what he set out to do, that’s exactly what he did. The millions of people who died of hunger-related deaths in German-occupied territory were his responsibility, and the responsibility of the other Allied leaders who participated in the food blockade. Churchill was also a participant in other genocidal acts, such as extermination bombing raids, the treatment of German POWs after the war, the early stages of Operation Keelhaul, and (to an extent) the Morgenthau Plan. To his credit, Churchill was never enthusiastic about the Morgenthau Plan, and had to have his arm twisted at the Quebec Conference to participate in it.

Looking at outcomes as a whole rather than only in part we should remember that these also included democratic free peoples across western Europe.

If the Western democratic goal for entering WWII was to save Poland from foreign tyranny, the war was a failure. If the goal was to preserve democracy in France, the war was unnecessary. Hitler never wanted war with France or the west. If the goal was to forcibly impose democracy on Germany, they were 50% successful, in that they conquered the western 50% of Germany. But if that last point was their objective, then (from the Western democratic perspective), WWII was a war of aggression and imperialism, not a war of liberation.

But you take a worthwhile cause and then undermine your argument by drawing conclusions
every bit as one-sided as those who presented us with the Allies perfect / Nazis evil picture in the first place.

Probably everyone reading this thread has spent a lifetime steeped in history written from the Allied perspective. My posts are going to seem one-sided–at least to people who have spent decades immersed in that perspective.

When I was younger, I read a complaint about Allied hypocrisy. The Allies had loudly complained about German bombing attacks against civilian targets in England, while remaining silent about their own, far more massive attacks against civilian targets in Germany. At the time, I thought that complaint was nonsensical. Of course they’re different, I thought to myself, the German raids against England were clearly a war crime. The Allied raids against Germany clearly weren’t.

That was an example of how I thought after having been steeped in a pro-Allied perspective. At the time, I didn’t realize how one-sided I was. I honestly believed I was being neutral! I’ve since had to deprogram myself–almost like the deprogramming one has to do to escape the brainwashing efforts of cults. That effort took years. But I believe that effort is now successful, and that my brain is Allied propaganda-free.

On the surface, rejecting Axis propaganda should be easier, because we are exposed to so little of it. However, once Allied propaganda is rejected, it’s very important to not use Axis propaganda to fill the resulting void.

Sorry KG, but my answer won’t progress the argument much.

Regarding whether Churchill participated in genocide I refer you to the definition I included in my previous post. Clearly the definition exempts Churchill from genocide but the accusation falls squarely on the shoulders of the Nazis.

Yes - Churchill did participate in acts that today would be labelled by many as war crimes. (So did Roosevelt, who deluded himself into believing Britain the bigger threat to US security that the Soviets.) I have already said as much in an earlier posting in this thread. In that same posting, however, I did flag that our parameters for war crimes have changed since 1945, the bar having become more stringent as we confront such issues from the peace and security that these self same acts gave us. Also that in an existential war (which it was for the UK and Russia) difficult decisions are made in challenging circumstances. From our armchairs it is easy to deplore what at the time may have seemed unavoidable.

I like to think that I too have rejected Allied propaganda, as I hope my posts demonstrate. However, I have replaced it with a firm belief in certain fundamentals that give me a clear moral steer. The Germans were the aggressors. The Germans were a strategic threat to the beleaguered democracies. The Germans pursued genocide and other heinous acts not equalled by two at least of the three allies. I believe these facts are utterly rock-solid, but that you do not and will not accept them.

Private Panic wrote:

Clearly the definition exempts Churchill from genocide but the accusation falls squarely on the shoulders of the Nazis.

I disagree with that.

If you look at pre-war crimes committed in Europe, both the Nazis and the Western democracies had relatively clean records. (The Western democracies’ brutality in their colonies is a subject for a different thread.) The Soviets had a very, very ugly prewar record, with millions of murders to show for their actions.

If you look at crimes committed during the war, all the major crimes committed by the Nazis had a “yes, but” associated with them. Did the Nazis kill millions of Jews? Yes, but they couldn’t feed everyone within their own borders. Did the Nazis starve millions of Slavs? Yes, but they couldn’t feed everyone within their own borders. To ignore the “yes, but” part of that equation is to stray from the straight and narrow path of truth.

On the other hand, Churchill and other Allied leaders chose to use food as a weapon, knowing that millions of innocent civilians would die as a result of their decision. I regard that as the greatest single crime committed during the war, and the one for which there is the least justification.

The main military benefit of the Allied food blockade was that it furthered the Allied propaganda effort. By making it physically impossible for the Germans to feed the people in the lands they conquered, the food blockade created the illusion that the Germans were even worse than the Soviets. Had food been allowed through the Allied blockade, the Germans could have fed the people of Eastern Europe and the western Soviet Union. Had those people been fed, many Soviet citizens might well have fought for the Germans and against Stalin’s evil regime. The second most important military benefit of the Allied food blockade was that it prevented Germany from feeding the Soviet POWs working in German weapons factories. Millions of Soviet POWs died of starvation, despite Hitler’s direct order that they be fed.

In that same posting, however, I did flag that our parameters for war crimes have changed since 1945 . . .

In the Nuremberg Trials, the Allies were more than happy to subject the Nazis’ decisions to a very high level of critical scrutiny. I see no reason whatever that the Allies’ own decisions should be exempted from the standards they used on the Nazis.

Also that in an existential war (which it was for the UK and Russia) difficult decisions are made . . .

WWII was not an existential war for Britain. Britain had the option of obtaining peace whenever it wanted to, with no loss of British territory. They chose to disregard German offers of peace, and continue fighting instead.

WWII was an existential war for the Soviet Union–or at least for the Soviet government and the Soviet system. It was also an existential war for Germany. I am willing to apply your “difficult decisions are made in existential conflicts” logic to both Germany and the Soviet Union. For example: during the war, Stalin transferred a large portion of the Soviet farm labor force to the military or to factories making weapons. This caused severe hunger in the Soviet Union, with a significant number of people dying as a result. I have not accused the Soviets of committing a war crime for doing that; just as I didn’t accuse the Germans of committing a war crime due to having transferred some farm animals to military use.

While “existential war” logic can justify stuff like that, it does not justify the British using a food blockade to starve millions of Poles. Especially considering that the Poles were the ones whom Britain supposedly went to war to protect.

The Germans were the aggressors.

The Soviets had become the aggressors long before Hitler even took power. If Hitler was aggressive in his efforts to build a Greater Germany, it was because he knew that only a strong Germany could withstand Soviet aggression. And he knew from past experience that the Western democracies would do precisely nothing to stop or slow Soviet expansionism.

This first became clear in the Polish-Soviet War, which occurred in 1919 - 1921. The Soviet Union had wished to annex Poland. Then, at least according to a highly reliable Soviet source (and Soviet defector to Britain), the Soviet Union intended to keep pushing west into Germany. Germany had been disarmed in the aftermath of WWI, and was already on the brink of a communist revolution. After conquering Poland, the Soviets intended to meet up with the German communists.

Did the Western democracies declare war on the Soviet Union for having invaded Poland? Did they launch an “existential war” against the Soviets? No! They didn’t even send soldiers to help Poland. A pro-Soviet British government sent weapons to the Soviets, but not to Poland. The French sent the Polish some military advisors, but otherwise did nothing to help Poland. Nor did the United States do anything useful. As the Soviets pushed westward, the western democracies advised Poland to obtain the best surrender terms it could. Instead of which, the Polish, alone and unaided, won an unexpected victory near Warsaw. That victory turned the tide of the entire war, and (temporarily) saved both Poland and Germany from the terror of Soviet occupation.

You’d think that in light of Soviet expansionism, and in light of Western democratic refusal to do anything at all to stop it, that Germany would have been allowed a decent military. A strong Germany could have been a counterweight to the Soviet threat. Instead, the Western democracies insisted that Germany limit itself to only a token military. Their Versailles Treaty also kept Germany crippled economically. Their post WWI policies created a power vacuum in the heart of Europe–a vacuum Stalin was only too eager to fill.

It was in this environment that Hitler came to power. Hitler immediately renounced the Versailles Treaty, and began building up Germany militarily and industrially. The Allied response to that was to embrace a pro-Soviet strategy of encirclement. France and the Soviet Union signed a defensive alliance in 1935. Czechoslovakia also signed a defensive alliance with the Soviets that same year. The Western democracies were no more interested in preventing the Soviet conquest of Poland, Eastern Europe, or Germany in the '30s than they had been in the '20s.

In 1939, French politicians told a pack of lies to the naive Polish. Polish government officials believed the lies, and embraced an anti-German foreign policy. While Hitler was not privy to the secret conferences in which the French and British lied to the Poles, his reading of the diplomatic tea leaves convinced him that Britain and France were determined to go to war. Hitler knew that time was not on Germany’s side. If war was inevitable, it was better from the German perspective for it to occur in 1939 than some later year.

The Germans and the Western democracies were not the only nations preparing for war. Stalin was also gearing up for an invasion of Europe. From Hitler’s perspective, it made sense to deal with the Western democratic threat first, before the Soviets could mount their invasion of Europe. Neither Hitler nor anyone in the German military had any appetite for a two front war.

To label the Germans “aggressors” is accurate, but perhaps overly simplistic. It’s far from obvious what non-aggressive foreign policy Germany could possibly have pursued which would have protected it from Soviet invasion. I know a lot about this war, and I have no idea what I could have done in Hitler’s place, to have protected Germany. Had the Germans stayed within their own borders, minding their own business, the Red Army would have overrun first Eastern Europe, and then Germany itself. The Western democracies would have done every bit as much to stop that invasion as they did to stop the Soviets’ invasion of Poland in 1920. Which is to say, they would have done nothing at all.

If you doubt the truth of that last statement, consider the Western democratic response to the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, and its invasion of Finland in 1940. Also consider the Western democratic response to the Soviet annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in 1940, as well as to the Soviet annexation of part of Romania in that same year.

Rather than have a muddled debate with lots of points at issue, I thought we might get somewhere if I picked up on just one:

@KurtGodel7:

If you look at crimes committed during the war, all the major crimes committed by the Nazis had a “yes, but” associated with them. Did the Nazis kill millions of Jews? Yes, but they couldn’t feed everyone within their own borders.

Did the Nazis also exterminate millions of Jews by other means - gas chambers, mobile death squads and the like? Was there a systematic and deliberate plan to exterminate the Jews? Were the Nazis therefore guilty of genocide?

I ask because this last post of yours, nor any previously so far as I have read, have accepted this accusation. When I have a clear answer to that I will happy to debate whether the Allies were guilty of genocide.

Private Panic wrote:

Did the Nazis also exterminate millions of Jews by other means - gas chambers, mobile death squads and the like?

Based on the reading I’ve done, I believe that the Nazis used gas chambers and mobile death squads to kill large numbers of Jews. That particular subject is not one I’ve researched in depth, at least not yet.

Was there a systematic and deliberate plan to exterminate the Jews?

During the '30s, the Nazi plan for the Jews was to encourage emigration to Palestine. However, the British–who owned Palestine at the time–closed off additional Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1939. Starting in 1942, the Nazis began a systematic effort to exterminate large numbers of Jews. Eliminating the Jewish population was seen as the best way of freeing up calories desperately needed to feed other groups of people.

Were the Nazis therefore guilty of genocide?

An act of genocide definitely occurred. There is the question of how much blame for that genocide should go to the Nazis (for singling out the Jews) and how much should go to the Allies (for having created famine conditions within Germany in the first place, and for having blocked Jewish immigration to Palestine and all other Allied-controlled nations and colonies).

I will not get into those questions right now. But I will point out that the Holocaust was extremely convenient for the Allies. They made it the centerpiece of their anti-Nazi propaganda effort, used it to distract attention from Soviet genocide, and also used it to reduce sympathy for wartime and postwar German victims of Western democratic genocide.

To add to my previous post: there is the illusion that Western democracies do not commit genocide. But then one could point out European acts of genocide in Africa, or American acts of genocide against the Native Americans. There are some who see such acts as the product of racism. The implication is that in the past Western democracies were willing to do terrible things to non-whites, but would stop short of doing those same things to white people.

However, even that latter, more circumscribed point is still inaccurate. As I pointed out earlier, the British committed genocide during the Boer War, including the extermination of half of Boer children. In absolute terms the death toll is significantly smaller than other genocides: “only” 28,000 victims. The Boers were white, of primarily Dutch ancestry.

A significantly larger genocide was the Irish Potato Famine, otherwise known as the Great Famine. Europe, including Ireland, had been hit with potato blight. Despite the potato blight, Ireland nevertheless ran at a food surplus. All that was necessary to prevent famine in Ireland was to forbid export of food. This, the British refused to do. Instead, they imposed new taxes on the Irish–taxes which punished land owners for extending charity to their starving neighbors.

Landlords were responsible for paying the rates of every tenant whose yearly rent was 4 [pounds] or less. Landlords whose land was crowded with poorer tenants were now faced with large bills. They began clearing the poor tenants from their small plots, and letting the land in larger plots for over 4 [pounds] which then reduced their debts. . . . While Helen Litton says there were also thousands of “voluntary” surrenders, she notes also that there was “precious little voluntary about them.” In some cases, tenants were persuaded to accept a small sum of money to leave their homes, “cheated into believing the workhouse would take them in.”[88] . . .

The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Clarendon, wrote a letter to Russell on 26 April 1849, urging that the government propose additional relief measures: “I don’t think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination.”[137] . . .

John Mitchel, one of the leaders of the Young Ireland Movement, wrote the following in 1860: “I have called it an artificial famine: that is to say, it was a famine which desolated a rich and fertile island that produced every year abundance and superabundance to sustain all her people and many more. The English, indeed, call the famine a ‘dispensation of Providence;’ and ascribe it entirely to the blight on potatoes. But potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe; yet there was no famine save in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is first, a fraud; second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine.”[139]

Estimates of the death toll range between 700,000 and 1.5 million victims, with the most common estimate being 1 million victims.

John Adams once wrote “Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy.” The Boer Wars, the Irish Potato Famine, and Allied actions during and after WWII were certainly consistent with his view.

I am going to focus on your answers to my genocide questions for now. Your other post re whether democracies are capable of and have at times committed genocide I will leave to one side as I do not doubt the idea, although I am sure there is much to argue over the examples.

@KurtGodel7:

Did the Nazis also exterminate millions of Jews by other means - gas chambers, mobile death squads and the like?

Based on the reading I’ve done, I believe that the Nazis used gas chambers and mobile death squads to kill large numbers of Jews. That particular subject is not one I’ve researched in depth, at least not yet.

Thanks.

@KurtGodel7:

Was there a systematic and deliberate plan to exterminate the Jews?

…. Starting in 1942, the Nazis began a systematic effort to exterminate large numbers of Jews…

Thanks again.

My selective quote above excluded the reasons you gave for this policy, so I’ll include those in the next quote where they are repeated.

@KurtGodel7:

Were the Nazis therefore guilty of genocide?

An act of genocide definitely occurred. There is the question of how much blame for that genocide should go to the Nazis (for singling out the Jews) and how much should go to the Allies (for having created famine conditions within Germany in the first place, and for having blocked Jewish immigration to Palestine and all other Allied-controlled nations and colonies).

I will not get into those questions right now. But I will point out that the Holocaust was extremely convenient for the Allies. They made it the centerpiece of their anti-Nazi propaganda effort, used it to distract attention from Soviet genocide, and also used it to reduce sympathy for wartime and postwar German victims of Western democratic genocide. Â

Does Britain limiting access to Palestine and a lack of food justify the Nazi murder of Jews? We are not talking about allowing hunger to take its course when food is not available, but proactive slaughter. Forget blame and convenience for the moment. Let’s focus on the morality. Do these reasons justify genocide?

Private Panic wrote:

Does Britain limiting access to Palestine and a lack of food justify the Nazi murder of Jews? We are not talking
about allowing hunger to take its course when food is not available, but proactive slaughter.

Before answering that question, I’ll pose one of my own. Suppose a bus is out of control, and is about to hit and kill ten people. You are witnessing this. You can stop the bus–but only by pushing one fat person off a bridge and into the bus’s path. Do you push the person off?

The reason I ask this question is because many people draw a moral distinction between passively letting death happen (watching while the bus kills ten people) and actively killing someone (pushing the fat person off the bridge). The ethical question then becomes: is there a moral distinction between passively letting someone die (letting the bus kill the ten people) and actively making someone die (by pushing the fat person off the bridge)? If a moral distinction like that should exist–if letting the 10 people die would be “good,” and pushing the fat person off the bridge to save them would be “evil,” then you are right to impose that passive versus proactive distinction on the Nazis.

However, there are those who look at the bus example and feel that the only thing which matters is the death toll. It doesn’t matter whether the people involved had been killed passively or actively–just whether they made it out dead or alive. According to that way of thinking, it is better to push the fat person in front of the bus, because that would result in a smaller death toll than the alternative.

Personally, I’m a member of the second camp. I believe that one death is less bad than ten deaths, and that the correct moral decision is to push the person off the bridge. I believe that the person who does the pushing should take responsibility for the one death he caused, just as a person who refuses to push should take responsibility for the ten deaths his inaction caused. Responsibility is equal in both cases, except that the latter person is responsible for ten times as many deaths.

The Allied food blockade was going to kill millions or (more likely) tens of millions of innocent people. The Nazis had the option of creating a plan for how those deaths would be distributed. They also had the option of allowing those deaths to be distributed by circumstances or random chance. They chose the former. Having determined which groups were going to get fed and which ones weren’t, they had the option of either passively starving the “not to be fed” groups, or actively killing them. In most cases they chose the former, but in some cases they chose the latter option.

The death toll imposed by the food blockade would have been roughly equal, regardless of whether the people in the “not to be fed” group were passively allowed to starve or actively hunted down and exterminated. From the Nazis’ perspective, the main advantage to actively hunting down and exterminating people was that it allowed them to exert more control over which people were fed and which weren’t. Suppose, for example, that the Nazis had chosen to passively starve the Jews to death. Put them all in ghettos, then blockade the ghettos’ food supply. Some food would have made it through the Nazis’ food blockade, resulting in some Jews within those ghettos surviving the war.

The reason the Nazis didn’t want that to happen is because, for them, feeding the Jews was a lower priority than feeding any other group. If the Jews in the ghettos had been fed, their food would have come at the direct expense of other population groups. The Nazis used two principles for the allocation of scarce food resources: race, and utility to the war effort. From both perspectives, feeding the Soviet POWs working in German weapons factories was considered a higher priority than feeding the Jews. The Germans didn’t have enough food to feed those Soviet POWs, resulting in millions of them starving to death.