I've always heard that whilst many knew of the existence of the camps, the exact purposes was known by very few. I would've thought if every Tom, Dick and Harry knew of their existence it'd have become public knowledge a damn site earlier than it did. I'm not a historian though so may be wrong. Anyone well educated in this area?
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Given that the Allies appear to have had very little inkling of their existence until the closing of the war and were horrified at their discovery do you really think that anything more than a tiny minority of Germans knew of their exact purpose or even existence?
What are you basing that on?
All of the survivors I've talked to talk about how people knew something was going on in neighboring nations long before they were taken. They may not have known the exact specifics, but all of the civilians seemed to know that SOMETHING was going on.
Do you think that Pollacks have magical knowledge powers, or maybe you are just making shit up about nobody having any idea.
The fact that parts of the US military were doing some fucked up shit with prisoners in Iraq doesn't mean that everyone else in the military supported it. You can't just go and say that the majority of German soldiers in WWII knew about and supported the Holocaust that, quite frankly, was a confusing and kind of mysterious thing until after the war had come to a close and the Nazi Party fell to pieces.
Hitler wrote a book where he detailed what he was going to do to the Jews. This was BEFORE his rise to power.
When german civilians are being rounded up and taken from their homes, their neighbors DO notice. This is VERY different from what is being done to prisoners by american soldiers in a far away land that most americans have never been to.
I always associate the term 'willful blindness' with the holocaust - sure, you may not have been sure that it was happening, but when neighbours are isolated over a period of years, then taken, then friends/associates/family see horrible things happening out East, then you should be able to think something is amiss.
On a related note - in Vienna (and possibly other ex Third Reich cities) they have placed metal plaques outside the houses/buildings where people (the ones I saw were all Jewish) lived before they were taken. Quiet a sobering experience to trip on one outside one's hotel when returning drunk.
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Given that the Allies appear to have had very little inkling of their existence until the closing of the war and were horrified at their discovery do you really think that anything more than a tiny minority of Germans knew of their exact purpose or even existence?
The Allies were an ocean (or a channel) away. The people in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, etc knew what was going on, if not to what extent.
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Given that the Allies appear to have had very little inkling of their existence until the closing of the war and were horrified at their discovery do you really think that anything more than a tiny minority of Germans knew of their exact purpose or even existence?
Yes?
Hell, some of the camps were built right next to German neighborhoods. America was in the prime of its isolationism and also had a great big ocean between it and them.
If you go to the camps in Poland you can see that some of them are right next to towns.
There's a famous quote from a man who lived in a place where he could see one of the camps every day. He was asked if he ever felt anything watching it, and he responded "When you cut your finger I do not bleed."
Yeah they notice, but the rights of jews had been slowly stripped away over a period of years. It's not so unbelievable to think they were just being put in an internment camp. You know just like what the Americans did to anyone vaguely Japanese?
Which isn't to say a number of people didn't know exactly what was going on. I just don't think it can be described as anywhere near a majority or even sizeable portion of the germans.
Yeah they notice, but the rights of jews had been slowly stripped away over a period of years. It's not so unbelievable to think they were just being put in an internment camp. You know just like what the Americans did to anyone vaguely Japanese?
You are making shit up that you don't know shit about.
The camps did not have huge walls around them. People could see what was going on in there.
The fact that parts of the US military were doing some fucked up shit with prisoners in Iraq doesn't mean that everyone else in the military supported it. You can't just go and say that the majority of German soldiers in WWII knew about and supported the Holocaust that, quite frankly, was a confusing and kind of mysterious thing until after the war had come to a close and the Nazi Party fell to pieces.
Hitler wrote a book where he detailed what he was going to do to the Jews. This was BEFORE his rise to power.
When german civilians are being rounded up and taken from their homes, their neighbors DO notice. This is VERY different from what is being done to prisoners by american soldiers in a far away land that most americans have never been to.
I just think it's a bit much to say that Germans joined up because they support the Holocaust, when in reality people join the military for many different reasons. I'm sure there were Nazi supporters in the German military. This in no way means they are necessarily representative of the army as a whole during that time.
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Given that the Allies appear to have had very little inkling of their existence until the closing of the war and were horrified at their discovery do you really think that anything more than a tiny minority of Germans knew of their exact purpose or even existence?
Which is more likely? That someone, say, in the US would know about a mass killing in, say, Africa or that someone in the US would know about a mass killing in Atlanta? Do you really think that if all of the sudden over a period of a few months all the blacks/latinos/asians/whatever dissapeared down to the last man that people wouldn't immediately realize what was going on?
Had a college roomate whose grandparents (ethnic germans and cathlolics) spent time in prison during ww2 due to being political dissidents exactly because of the holocaust... Unless someone lived in a cave, they knew what was going on.
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Given that the Allies appear to have had very little inkling of their existence until the closing of the war and were horrified at their discovery do you really think that anything more than a tiny minority of Germans knew of their exact purpose or even existence?
The Allies were an ocean (or a channel) away. The people in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, etc knew what was going on, if not to what extent.
And there was still international comminication. It wasn't all smoke signals before the internet.
The Allies were definitely aware at least of rumors of what was going on. It is actually a widely criticized thing that America chose to ignore said rumors until after Pearl Harbor.
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Did I ever say that? No.
But I doubt the majority of German soldiers had any idea of the length or the extremes of which the Nazi Party were purging Jews
I'm willing to bet quite a bit that most Germans' knowledge of the Holocaust before it all came out where "The Jews were all taken away to some camp somewhere", not unlike a majority of Americans' knowledge of Japanese internment
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Given that the Allies appear to have had very little inkling of their existence until the closing of the war and were horrified at their discovery do you really think that anything more than a tiny minority of Germans knew of their exact purpose or even existence?
The Allies were an ocean (or a channel) away. The people in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, etc knew what was going on, if not to what extent.
And there was still international comminication. It wasn't all smoke signals before the internet.
The Allies were definitely aware at least of rumors of what was going on. It is actually a widely criticized thing that America chose to ignore said rumors until after Pearl Harbor.
I don't know if I'd say that it's any more widely-criticized than America's choice to allow the Nazi Anschluss, the Sudeten Crisis, the blitzkrieg into Poland, etc.
Debate also continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Recent historical work suggests that the majority of Germans knew that Jews were being indiscriminately killed and persecuted but they did not know about the Final Solution and the specifics of the death camps. Robert Gellately, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely-respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was "substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans" in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known.[7]
Other scholars, like Peter Longerich, have argued that most Germans did not know about the mass-murders as they were occurring.[8]. There was an order to keep the Final Solution a secret (under death penalty) among the estimated 300,000 persons involved in implementing the plan. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke gives an estimation of less than a tenth of the population in 1943[9]. There were rumours of gas chambers
So apparently there is controversy as to how aware the German population was.
but i dont think all soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice. case in point: the nazis.
.
So all Germany Army soldiers in WWII either knew about, were complicit in, or actively participated in the Holocaust?
Really?
Do you think that the German people were unaware of the Holocaust?
I'm sorry. I'm not interested in comdemning Germany soldiers on the fronts, because it is a pointless endeavor, but are you honestly arguing that the Holocaust was carried out in secret?
Did I ever say that? No.
But I doubt the majority of German soldiers had any idea of the length or the extremes of which the Nazi Party were purging Jews
I'm willing to bet quite a bit that most Germans' knowledge of the Holocaust before it all came out where "The Jews were all taken away to some camp somewhere", not unlike a majority of Americans' knowledge of Japanese internment
Except that pretty much WAS were interment ended in the US.
Whereas in Germany, they were gassing and cremating people, and they weren't keeping it secret.
The Nazis were making soap out of the fat of dead jews, and stuffing mattresses with their hair. Jews were being used as slave labor. This WAS NOT some kind of state secret.
I just think it's a bit much to say that Germans joined up because they support the Holocaust
Where did I say that?
I'm not saying you said it, but a few posters have strongly implied that German soldiers in WWII don't deserve honoring because of the actions of their government. Likewise, southern soldiers during the Civil War.
I just think it's a bit much to say that Germans joined up because they support the Holocaust
Where did I say that?
I'm not saying you said it, but a few posters have strongly implied that German soldiers in WWII don't deserve honoring because of the actions of their government. Likewise, southern soldiers during the Civil War.
If you're going to mention something that you are arguing against while quoting me, please just clarify that I'm not the INDIVIDUAL who said it, so that some one else doesn't think I did.
I'm not convinced that the average German was so isolated that they couldn't tell what was going on, especially the ones living in the cities or near the camps. During that time if one were to keep their eyes and ears open, one could figure out what was happening despite propaganda (re: the Jews were disenfranchised, accused of being scum of the earth, isolated in ghettos then shipped to 'work camps', where they were never ever heard from again.) Speaking out about it under such a fascist regime is a whole different matter entirely.
Edit: To try to stay on the topic, like someone posted before, the civil war happened before the age of mass media and most were uneducated farmers. Yeah, most were racist but that was the culture. It wasn't even the main reason the average southerner took up arms. They shouldn't be condemned, but they shouldn't be honored either. Anyway, what the hell, it happened 150 years ago...Why do people even give a fuck?
I'm not convinced that the average German was so isolated that they couldn't tell what was going on, especially the ones living in the cities or near the camps. During that time if one were to keep their eyes and ears open, one could figure out what was happening despite propaganda (re: the Jews were disenfranchised, accused of being scum of the earth, isolated in ghettos then shipped to 'work camps', where they were never ever heard from again.) Speaking out about it under such a fascist regime is a whole different matter entirely.
Absolutely.
It's worth bringing up that German Jews were a regular part of German society before this. Germany previous to the rise of Hitler was actually the BEST place to be Jewish in Europe, at the time. Many German Jews had proudly served in the military during WWI, fighting for their Fatherland.
Jews disappearing is a thing that people would have noticed.
Note that Peter Longerich is one of the foremost in his field, and doesn't claim that the american civil war was not about slavery, so appears to have the better credentials here.
Note that Peter Longerich is one of the foremost in his field, and doesn't claim that the american civil war was not about slavery, so appears to have the better credentials here.
That's an argument from authority. The fact that he is respected doesn't make him automatically right.
He is also German, which means that he could be said to have a bias in defending the German commoners.
The idea that no one knew what was going on contradicts the many first hadn accounts that I have been given personally, and heard seen and read second hand.
I believe that what Longrich is ACTUALLY claiming, and what you (and wikipedia) are twisting is that the German people did not know, for a fact, the specific extent of what was going on. This is probably true, because the Germans did not like to have all of the death camps on German soil (which is why so many are in Poland). That is NOT the same thing as complete ignorance, though.
edit: Leitner, how much time have you spent with primary sources here? How many survivors, or other people who were living there at the time, have you talked to? You're making claims based on a wikipedia page, but I don't see you bringing anything else to the table.
Have you visited the camps before, and seen just how close they were to civilized areas?
This is unfortunately a topic that cannot help but be Godwin'ed because regardless of the motivations of the grunts on the ground (Confederate soldiers, German soldiers in WWII) the motivations of the political elite that are motivating the war (Plantation Owners, Nazi Party) are going to be remembered and analyzed. The fact that we tend to morally equate human slavery and bondage as being pretty equal to genocide means that comparing the Confederate cause to Nazism is not an undeserved leap.
That said, honor the soldiers, but remind people why, exactly, the Confederate Elite decided to go to war.
Personally I don't care about the internets made up rules, Godwin and the like. Talk about whatever, it's just a frustrating topic and it always ends badly.
Really I think Slurp just nailed it on the head and now the actual Civil War discussion is pretty much ended.
Not really, going 'lol don't use this example which shares a huge number of parallels' isn’t exactly a brilliant attempt. Had he really wished to avoid it he could have accepted such in the op. I mean it could have used the Japanese instead, or a billion other countries in which the average man fights for abhorrent causes. But it would have gone down almost the exact same line because that is the crux of the argument. If you fight for your country but unwittingly for a dreadful cause should you be memorialised?
This is unfortunately a topic that cannot help but be Godwin'ed.
Godwin doesn't apply when the holocaust/Nazis is actually a relevant topic.
True.
Actually it does, and godwin doesn't mean what you think it means. It merely states as the length of an argument continues the chance of Nazis being mentioned reaches one. Because shockingly enough, the greatest most brutal war in human history, in which we had a country which was doing one of the most evil things imaginable, remembered by many alive today is useful in certain analogies. And was damn influnential to the national psyche of the west.
Edit: So I guess it's thead shitting time, if you can't think of something insightful or smart to say, merely call everyone involved dumb. Because, cynicism is clever and stuff. Look how pointless it all is, I sit atop you like a god with my majestic apathy!
This is unfortunately a topic that cannot help but be Godwin'ed.
Godwin doesn't apply when the holocaust/Nazis is actually a relevant topic.
True.
Actually it does, and godwin doesn't mean what you think it means. It merely states as the length of an argument continues the chance of Nazis being mentioned reaches one. Because shockingly enough, the greatest most brutal war in human history, in which we had a country which was doing one of the most evil things imaginable, remembered by many alive today is useful in certain analogies.
Exactly! I hate it when a valid point gets the "lol godwin" response. We can't help it that it fits so well for so many arguments, and it was never meant as a tool to deride arguments using WW2 to make a point.
This is unfortunately a topic that cannot help but be Godwin'ed.
Godwin doesn't apply when the holocaust/Nazis is actually a relevant topic.
True.
Actually it does, and godwin doesn't mean what you think it means. It merely states as the length of an argument continues the chance of Nazis being mentioned reaches one. Because shockingly enough, the greatest most brutal war in human history, in which we had a country which was doing one of the most evil things imaginable, remembered by many alive today is useful in certain analogies. And was damn influnential to the national psyche of the west.
Actually, Godwin isn't a real thing.
You see, the longer a thread gets, the greater the chance of ANYTHING being brought up in it is.
Edit: So I guess it's thead shitting time, if you can't think of something insightful or smart to say, merely call everyone involved dumb. Because, cynicism is clever and stuff. Look how pointless it all is, I sit atop you like a god with my majestic apathy!
Note that Peter Longerich is one of the foremost in his field, and doesn't claim that the american civil war was not about slavery, so appears to have the better credentials here.
This is unfortunately a topic that cannot help but be Godwin'ed.
Godwin doesn't apply when the holocaust/Nazis is actually a relevant topic.
True.
Actually it does, and godwin doesn't mean what you think it means. It merely states as the length of an argument continues the chance of Nazis being mentioned reaches one. Because shockingly enough, the greatest most brutal war in human history, in which we had a country which was doing one of the most evil things imaginable, remembered by many alive today is useful in certain analogies. And was damn influnential to the national psyche of the west.
Actually, Godwin isn't a real thing.
You see, the longer a thread gets, the greater the chance of ANYTHING being brought up in it is.
No, it's definitely a real thing. What you're proposing is more like the Infinite Monkey theorem.
This is unfortunately a topic that cannot help but be Godwin'ed.
Godwin doesn't apply when the holocaust/Nazis is actually a relevant topic.
True.
Actually it does, and godwin doesn't mean what you think it means. It merely states as the length of an argument continues the chance of Nazis being mentioned reaches one. Because shockingly enough, the greatest most brutal war in human history, in which we had a country which was doing one of the most evil things imaginable, remembered by many alive today is useful in certain analogies. And was damn influnential to the national psyche of the west.
Actually, Godwin isn't a real thing.
You see, the longer a thread gets, the greater the chance of ANYTHING being brought up in it is.
No, it's definitely a real thing. What you're proposing is more like the Infinite Monkey theorem.
The point is more that they are the same thing.
The fact that it is on Wikipedia doesn't some how legitimize it.
It's an internet meme (born out of a usenet meme), not a "law".
Posts
I've always heard that whilst many knew of the existence of the camps, the exact purposes was known by very few. I would've thought if every Tom, Dick and Harry knew of their existence it'd have become public knowledge a damn site earlier than it did. I'm not a historian though so may be wrong. Anyone well educated in this area?
What are you basing that on?
All of the survivors I've talked to talk about how people knew something was going on in neighboring nations long before they were taken. They may not have known the exact specifics, but all of the civilians seemed to know that SOMETHING was going on.
Do you think that Pollacks have magical knowledge powers, or maybe you are just making shit up about nobody having any idea.
Hitler wrote a book where he detailed what he was going to do to the Jews. This was BEFORE his rise to power.
When german civilians are being rounded up and taken from their homes, their neighbors DO notice. This is VERY different from what is being done to prisoners by american soldiers in a far away land that most americans have never been to.
On a related note - in Vienna (and possibly other ex Third Reich cities) they have placed metal plaques outside the houses/buildings where people (the ones I saw were all Jewish) lived before they were taken. Quiet a sobering experience to trip on one outside one's hotel when returning drunk.
The Allies were an ocean (or a channel) away. The people in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, etc knew what was going on, if not to what extent.
If you go to the camps in Poland you can see that some of them are right next to towns.
There's a famous quote from a man who lived in a place where he could see one of the camps every day. He was asked if he ever felt anything watching it, and he responded "When you cut your finger I do not bleed."
Which isn't to say a number of people didn't know exactly what was going on. I just don't think it can be described as anywhere near a majority or even sizeable portion of the germans.
You are making shit up that you don't know shit about.
The camps did not have huge walls around them. People could see what was going on in there.
I just think it's a bit much to say that Germans joined up because they support the Holocaust, when in reality people join the military for many different reasons. I'm sure there were Nazi supporters in the German military. This in no way means they are necessarily representative of the army as a whole during that time.
Which is more likely? That someone, say, in the US would know about a mass killing in, say, Africa or that someone in the US would know about a mass killing in Atlanta? Do you really think that if all of the sudden over a period of a few months all the blacks/latinos/asians/whatever dissapeared down to the last man that people wouldn't immediately realize what was going on?
Had a college roomate whose grandparents (ethnic germans and cathlolics) spent time in prison during ww2 due to being political dissidents exactly because of the holocaust... Unless someone lived in a cave, they knew what was going on.
And there was still international comminication. It wasn't all smoke signals before the internet.
The Allies were definitely aware at least of rumors of what was going on. It is actually a widely criticized thing that America chose to ignore said rumors until after Pearl Harbor.
Where did I say that?
Did I ever say that? No.
But I doubt the majority of German soldiers had any idea of the length or the extremes of which the Nazi Party were purging Jews
I'm willing to bet quite a bit that most Germans' knowledge of the Holocaust before it all came out where "The Jews were all taken away to some camp somewhere", not unlike a majority of Americans' knowledge of Japanese internment
I don't know if I'd say that it's any more widely-criticized than America's choice to allow the Nazi Anschluss, the Sudeten Crisis, the blitzkrieg into Poland, etc.
So apparently there is controversy as to how aware the German population was.
Except that pretty much WAS were interment ended in the US.
Whereas in Germany, they were gassing and cremating people, and they weren't keeping it secret.
The Nazis were making soap out of the fat of dead jews, and stuffing mattresses with their hair. Jews were being used as slave labor. This WAS NOT some kind of state secret.
I'm not saying you said it, but a few posters have strongly implied that German soldiers in WWII don't deserve honoring because of the actions of their government. Likewise, southern soldiers during the Civil War.
If you're going to mention something that you are arguing against while quoting me, please just clarify that I'm not the INDIVIDUAL who said it, so that some one else doesn't think I did.
Edit: To try to stay on the topic, like someone posted before, the civil war happened before the age of mass media and most were uneducated farmers. Yeah, most were racist but that was the culture. It wasn't even the main reason the average southerner took up arms. They shouldn't be condemned, but they shouldn't be honored either. Anyway, what the hell, it happened 150 years ago...Why do people even give a fuck?
Absolutely.
It's worth bringing up that German Jews were a regular part of German society before this. Germany previous to the rise of Hitler was actually the BEST place to be Jewish in Europe, at the time. Many German Jews had proudly served in the military during WWI, fighting for their Fatherland.
Jews disappearing is a thing that people would have noticed.
That's an argument from authority. The fact that he is respected doesn't make him automatically right.
He is also German, which means that he could be said to have a bias in defending the German commoners.
The idea that no one knew what was going on contradicts the many first hadn accounts that I have been given personally, and heard seen and read second hand.
I believe that what Longrich is ACTUALLY claiming, and what you (and wikipedia) are twisting is that the German people did not know, for a fact, the specific extent of what was going on. This is probably true, because the Germans did not like to have all of the death camps on German soil (which is why so many are in Poland). That is NOT the same thing as complete ignorance, though.
edit: Leitner, how much time have you spent with primary sources here? How many survivors, or other people who were living there at the time, have you talked to? You're making claims based on a wikipedia page, but I don't see you bringing anything else to the table.
Have you visited the camps before, and seen just how close they were to civilized areas?
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Really I think Slurp just nailed it on the head and now the actual Civil War discussion is pretty much ended.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
That said, honor the soldiers, but remind people why, exactly, the Confederate Elite decided to go to war.
Godwin doesn't apply when the holocaust/Nazis is actually a relevant topic.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
You forgot religion.
Not really, going 'lol don't use this example which shares a huge number of parallels' isn’t exactly a brilliant attempt. Had he really wished to avoid it he could have accepted such in the op. I mean it could have used the Japanese instead, or a billion other countries in which the average man fights for abhorrent causes. But it would have gone down almost the exact same line because that is the crux of the argument. If you fight for your country but unwittingly for a dreadful cause should you be memorialised?
True.
I didn't want to say it for fear of igniting it's horrible fire that burns through threads like a volcano on cocaine.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Actually it does, and godwin doesn't mean what you think it means. It merely states as the length of an argument continues the chance of Nazis being mentioned reaches one. Because shockingly enough, the greatest most brutal war in human history, in which we had a country which was doing one of the most evil things imaginable, remembered by many alive today is useful in certain analogies. And was damn influnential to the national psyche of the west.
Edit: So I guess it's thead shitting time, if you can't think of something insightful or smart to say, merely call everyone involved dumb. Because, cynicism is clever and stuff. Look how pointless it all is, I sit atop you like a god with my majestic apathy!
Exactly! I hate it when a valid point gets the "lol godwin" response. We can't help it that it fits so well for so many arguments, and it was never meant as a tool to deride arguments using WW2 to make a point.
ITT I get irritated at the internet.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Actually, Godwin isn't a real thing.
You see, the longer a thread gets, the greater the chance of ANYTHING being brought up in it is.
You mean like this?
Seriously, man. Seriously.
No, it's definitely a real thing. What you're proposing is more like the Infinite Monkey theorem.
The point is more that they are the same thing.
The fact that it is on Wikipedia doesn't some how legitimize it.
It's an internet meme (born out of a usenet meme), not a "law".