Just a quick study break! Trust me, this is much less time consuming, and requires much less concentration, than our recent jousting match. :D
BTW - I only play the oldest version of A&A. Please explain about RR, bids, etc.
Danke.
Just a quick study break! Trust me, this is much less time consuming, and requires much less concentration, than our recent jousting match. :D
BTW - I only play the oldest version of A&A. Please explain about RR, bids, etc.
Danke.
I’ve been playing Axis & Allies a long time (since '87) and I would say that a player cannot over-estimate the importance of the conflict between Germany and Russia. You could say that the fate of the war hinges on how quickly Russia can be taken out. If Russia is wiped out relatively quickly, an Axis victory is much more likely. If Russia manages to hang in there for a long time, they can become an anvil against which the Western Allies can smash Germany, and Japan’s eventual fate is a foregone conclusion, fighting alone against three adversaries.
What I want to know is, how long do the Soviets usually hang around in your games? I’m a pretty good player with Germany, so if I’m playing against a real chump (and the dice are with me) I can be in Moscow in two or three turns. When I play Japan, I always make a point to snatch up the eastern USSR provinces to make my German ally’s work easier. Sometimes, I can even threaten Moscow.
On the other hand, I have a buddy who is a really good Russian player, and has hung in their against me for entire games now and then. How about y’all?
(I play the Allies too, but that’s for another poll :wink: )
i meant no disrespect to you, and sorry if i somehow offended you, but you know what, F*** off. you want to be offended by it, fine, go ahead
Boy Janus, you sure picked the right name (i.e. the two faced god of Graeco-Roman mythology). Are you bi-polar or what? “Sorry if I offended you, but f*** you!”. Double your dosage buddy, and don’t bust a blood-vessel being so FED-UP! :lol:
Now if you and your moronic buddy will excuse me, I’ve got to get back to hitting the bottle and shooting craps at my casino on your tax dollar. :wink:
Agent_Smith - Its a small college, but I won’t get into which one. Too many psychos on the internet! :roll: Sorry I didn’t specify, but I thought that “college” was implicit in my statement about the summer semester. And yes, I’m in the abd phase of the Phd. You are correct that I was taking an absolutist position, but I thought that this simplistic and addle-brained poll/thread lent itself to such. My first instinct was to steer clear of it, but at least some intelligent discourse was generated.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t take it as being antagonistic! In fact, it has been fun. :D Quite honestly, if I had more time, I’d love to do a point by point rebuttal and keep it going. Unfortunately, after I get these finals graded, I have to start right away teaching a summer one course. You’d certainly get your A. I always tell my students, you can disagree with me or the text as vociferously as you like, so long as you can support your contensions with verifiable facts. Perhaps we’ll renew this discussion in July. I’m not teaching any summer two courses (that I know of).
Agent_Smith,
Despite our voluminous writings to the contrary, we really don’t disagree on all that much as far as the facts are concerned. In a way, we have been talking past one another because we are analysing two different aspects of the same question. You seem to be primarily concerned with the hard facts of each individual case, while I am more concerned (in this instance) with the philosophical and moral underpinnings of the communities involved and how that contributed to their behavior in a broader sense. Historical case study vs. historical survey, if you will.
This being the case, I suggest that we take a repast from the battlefield, and concentrate on other endeavors. I, for one, have finals to grade (and unfortunately, most of their authors are not as erudite a yourself! :wink: ) In any case, well met, my friend!
P.S. - I’ll mention your last remark to my Pequot friend. Amazing how this fact has escaped the US government! You’d think they’d be more careful in their classification.
@AgentSmith:
The Americans regarded the Native Americans as “savages” who had to, as you say, “deal or die”
And many native americans thought they were superior to the whites. Does that mean they to were guilty of the same crimes.
That is a ridiculous question. Some Jews may have felt superior to the Germans, but they cannot be accused of being guilty of a Holocaust. There is a big difference between feelings of superiority and putting those feelings into action.
@AgentSmith:
What you continue to ignore as the crucial difference between Nazism and Manifest destiny is that nazi policies were state policy for Germany and cannot be explained away to lessen guilt. However, manifest destiny was never an enacted policy in American gov’t. Sure it was a belief many held, but MD didn’t begin to develop until after the Eastern woodlands were secured up to the Mississippi, but most telling is the natives west of the Mississippi tend to have retained greater cultural and ethnic identity than did those in the East. However, to conclude the fate of the Pequot was the result of this idea, manifest destiny, which did not even exist yet is unfair. In terms of interation between whites and Indians there tends to be a great deal of revisionist history in that wrongs committed on the Plains get applied to what happened in the East despite the reality that the two time periods are seperated by almost 150 years. This is akin to trying the Spanish at Nuremburg for the Inquisition because it was too much like what the Germans had done during WWII despite that it was a historical anachronism.
First of all, I don’t believe that you can “explain away” or “lessen” American guilt any more than you can German guilt. Secondly, although the term Manifest Destiny may not have been an official state policy, it was certainly a de facto policy, and you cannot deny that feelings of racial and cultural superiority contributed to American treatment of Native peoples in all of the incidents we have discussed. American westward expansion and displacement of Native Americans was certainly policy whether it was termed Manifest Destiny at a given time or not. And it was certainly glorified and reveled in.
Also, if someone doing a study of anti-Semitism through the ages were to compare and contrast the Inquisition and the Holocaust and examine the common underlying current of anti-Semitisim latent in both incidents, that would not be tantamount to trying Torquemada alongside Goering. Comparisons of philosophies can be made without saying that they are the exact same thing.
My bottom line is that Europeans conquering and killing Europeans is not worse than Europeans conquering and killing non-Europeans. Unfortunately, some seem much more disturbed by the one and willing to offer a defense of the other.
@AgentSmith:
You both missed the point of the above post. A necessary component of genocide is that it must be a conscience effort in the case of native americans this is suspect. The biggest problem I see with you arguments is that they are based on the same flaws in thinking about the native Americans. Originally, people posted why they thought the native americans lost etc, but this generalizes a situation that was unique to every tribe and every time period. To compare the events of the Pequot War to that of the events of Wounded Knee homogenizes the plight of Native Americans too much. In the case of the Pequot as I said they were an Algonquin people and as such their final doom was brought about not so much by the English, but by their Iroquis allies.
In fact many of your examples of atrocities towards the native Americans come from the plains/western indian area, and aren’t applicable to the first 250 years of European/Native American encounters. The phrase “the only Indian is a dead Indian” has been attributed to Phil Sheridan circa 1875. I also believe there is some doubt as to whether or not he actually said it.
It is definitely true that each conflict is unique, especially since in many cases there are decades separating the events in question, and no one would deny that each Native American nation constitutes a distinct cultural and linguistic unit, just as any European ethnic group does. Nevertheless, certain generalizations can be made which hold true in all cases, especially when we are talking about the kinds of philosophies which motivated the white Americans. These are worthy of comparison with the racist attitudes of the Third Reich. The idea that one group in superior in race and culture (white Americans/Germans) and has been ordained by a higher power (God/Providence) to displace and conquer the other (Native Americans/Slavs) is certainly a common theme. Of course, how this idea was applied in each case was radically different.
I did not accuse the Americans of engaging in a systematic programme of genocide comprable to that of the Nazis, but there can be no doubt that attempts at wiping out entire Native tribes were made by certain groups of colonists at certain times (And that a general attitude was prevalent that the Natives should alternately be assimilated or annihilated). I don’t think that the colonists can be exonerated simply by blaming their Indian allies for their role in the destruction of the Pequot. Consider these words by Cotton Mather:
“In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians
were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them.”
“It may be demanded…Should not Christians have more mercy and
compassion? But…sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their
parents… We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”
-Puritan divine Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana
The Pequot are not extinct, but they certainly feel that an attempt at genocide was made against them. I e-mailed a Pequot friend of mine about this discussion, and he recommended the book AMERICAN HOLOCAUST, CONQUEST OF THE NEW WORLD
Oxford Press, 1992 for anyone interested.
I never compared the slaughter of the Pequot to Wounded Knee, but such a comparison could be made without homogenizing the Native American nations involved, just as one could compare the Armenian Holocaust to the Shoah without homogenizing Europeans. Such is the nature of historical survey.
Also, I am aware that some have attributed the “dead Indian” quote to Sheridan, but he was certainly not the first to say it. Vine DeLoria and other imminent historians have reported that it was prevalent in the 18th c., long before Sheridan’s time.
@AgentSmith:
But the idea that the Native societies became so eroded as to deserve displacement and removal to reservations is not only morally bankrupt and reprehensible, but also factually incorrect. This is especially true in the case of the Cherokee
I wasn’t implying they deserved removal only they were victims of larger socio-economic forces which they had no control over. The Cherokee for example did manage to resist white invasions for a long while. In fact if you look at the history of the settlement of the deep south, Alabama was the last state settled because the Cherokee presented a bulwark against settlement from Tennessee. The point I was making here was that white settlement caused dislocation of native peoples which eroded their concept of land ownership. In previous posts others mentioned the Indians were pushed off their because they had no concept of land ownership which isn’t true at all, but when your homeland changes 2-3 times in 100 years it becomes less important to hold on to for purely nostaglic reasons…
I don’t disagree with this, so long as it is not used as a justification for displacement after displacement. You realize that apologists for Americans expansion could warp this argument to suit their purposes.
@AgentSmith:
By in large comparing Indian displacement to Lebensraum is totally inaccurate when I think a better comparison is to that of land enclosure of peasants in England.
I disagree, based on the similarities that I pointed out in my previous post to Janus. The feelings of racial and cultural superiority over the displaced which was present in both Hitler’s move east and America’s move west was lacking in the land enclosure of the English peasants. Perhaps my comparison would seem a little more accurate if Hitler’s move east would have been more successful, and the area was now populated by Germanic settlers.
as i understand them, Darthmaul, they are not kindred philosophies.
manifest destiny was the belief that it was “ordained by god” that we should expand to the west coast. native americans (which is an ironic term btw) had to deal, or die, unfortunately. European societies were not known for their tolerance of other cultures. indians were percieved to be savage, and undeserving of their land, which they made no formal claim to anyway. it wasnt seen as any kind of negative thing at the time (except by certain people) and was expected.
Lebensraum was the desire for “living space”. Hitler felt the Reich needed more space, for the aryan race to thrive and prosper. at the time, the land he would “expand” into, was heavily populated by very developed societies (buildings, infrastructure, etc), quite unlike the Indian tribes, who were relatively far between in comparison, and were far les developed.
again, i dont say this to justify what happened, it was terrible, im simply contrasting the ideas, and trying to understand the reasoning.
They most certainly are kindred philosophies. They even sound alike the way you describe them. The Americans believed that they were “ordained by God” to expand to the west. The Nazis believed that they were “ordained by Providence” to expand to the east. The Americans regarded the Native Americans as “savages” who had to, as you say, “deal or die”. Hitler regarded the Slavs as an inferior race who also had to “deal or die” when the Aryans moved into the neighborhood. The white Americans regarded themselves as the racial and cultural superiors of the Native Americans. The Nazis regarded themselves as the racial and cultural superiors of the Slavs. The white Americans, as you say, didn’t see this expansion as a negative thing at the time. Neither did the Nazis see what they were doing as a negative thing, or they wouldn’t have done it.
It sounds like what you are saying is that the Nazis rolling over the Slavs was worse than the Americans rolling over the Indians simply because the Slavs had European buildings, technology, and civilization. That would certainly be a boneheaded and hypocritical argument, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is not what you are saying.
also, Darthmaul, how much you are does matter. i dont care about actual percentage, and the fact that you arent “fullblood” doesnt matter, but to often people call themselves native american, and try to act like it, when one person somewhere in their past was a native american (like me, someone somewhere in my heritage was a Cherokee, but i dont walk around calling myself an Indian)
Thanks anyway, but I don’t need your approval to determine my own identity, and I hope that these people who “try to act” like Native Americans don’t either. Just out of curiosity, what do they do to try to “act like” Native Americans? In retrospect, I shouldn’t have even answered your initial question. I hope you realize that you aren’t the final authority on who is Native American and who is not. Being Cherokee is about being part of a family that identifies itself as such. I have Cherokee relatives with blonde hair and blue eyes, and others that might look Black to you. Such classifications are man made and rather arbitrary anyway.
Of course the two situations had their differences, separated as they were by centuries, but this does not make valid comparisons impossible, or even a “stretch”. To begin with, “Lebensraum” and “Manifest Destiny” are kindred philosophies. They are both attempts to justify the expansion of Nazi Germany and Colonial America respectively by claiming that the will of a higher power (Providence or God) is being fulfilled. Also, the attitude of the British colonizers of North America and the Germans who intended to colonize Eastern Europe were essentially the same: Get the untermenschen out of the way by any means necessary! (Waiting for F_alk to correct my German! :D ) Since both the colonial Americans and the Nazi Germans felt that they were dealing with adversaries who were something less than fully human, they had no qualms about uprooting them, or liquidating them if necessary. Take for example the wiping out of entire Pequot villages down to the last person, or the distribution among certain Algonquin tribes of blankets known to be infected with smallpox. These were attempts at eradication. The phrase “The only good Indian is a dead Indian!” became popular among American colonists. Why not “The only good Dutchman is a dead Dutchman!”? Although the English colonists were also competing with the Dutch for land and hegemony at this time, no one would think to question whether or not the Dutch were the equals of the Anglos in humanity. Not so with the Natives. So therefore, a comparison with the idea of the untermensch is valid.
You made some good points about how the Europeans took advantage of the rivalry of different tribes among the Natives. We are all familiar with the history that you mention. No one would attempt to make the point that the Native Americans were a monolithic society, or that there was a uniform mode of resistance to European expansion. In fact, there are more languages spoken today in Oklahoma than there are spoken in Europe! But the idea that the Native societies became so eroded as to deserve displacement and removal to reservations is not only morally bankrupt and reprehensible, but also factually incorrect. This is especially true in the case of the Cherokee. In fact, at the time of the removal to Oklahoma, the Cherokee not only had farms and business, but also treaties with the government and deeds to their land. When white squatters tried to move in, they took their case as far as the US Supreme Court, which ruled that the whites had to get off. The ruling was unenforced by the executive branch, however, because Jackson was a flat out racist who made public his contempt for Native Americans, and his desire that they be removed west. Georgia proceeded with the land lottery of 1832 and gave Cherokee land to whites who began to move in. Furthermore, even if a particular Native American society became so decimated by white aggression as to render it less than functional, this would in no way justify its removal or elimination so that whites could appropriate the land.
The comparison remains valid. Both were cases of expansion by powers which viewed their rivals as impediments to progress, and less than fully human. My purpose in making this argument is to expose the hypocrisy of those who feel that European colonial expansion was “natural” or “progress”, but that German expansion in Europe was wrong. I’m not accusing you of holding to this hypocritical point of view. If the Germans had won the war, surely all the little school kids in Europe would be learning about how German expansion in the 1940’s was perfectly natural, and in the end, best for everyone involved. The victors write the history books and shape the minds of the future generations.
well, darthmaul, the prevailing logic being that Indians werent a recognized state. wont agree or disagree with that, just stating. also, they had no concept of ownership of the land (or at least far less than Europeans). is that right or wrong? again, up to you to decide.
however, you say you are part cherokee? how much? becuase so many people say they are, and it turns out they are like 1/10%. please tell me its some significant part
I don’t see how it matters to you what percentage Cherokee I am, the argument stands on its own even if I were Martian. Nevertheless, to satisfy your curiosity, I am roughly 30% (far from “full-blood”, but way more than 1/10).The weak imperialist justifications for seizing the land don’t hold water at all, especially considering the fact that the US made numerous treaties with various Native American nations throughout the continent promising them sole ownership of certain tracts of land in perpetuity, and broke every one of them, just as Hitler tossed out certain “pieces of paper” when it suited his agenda to do so. The Cherokee even won the right to keep their land in the US Supreme Court, but the racist law enforcement agencies wouldn’t uphold the decision and remove the white squatters. Again, some people who are apalled by Hitler’s conquering France, Poland, or Norway aren’t bothered at all by various Western powers conquering parts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, or the Americas, and that is hypocrisy plain and simple.