It always seemed very cruel to me that the Nazis fantasized about this vast Jewish conspiracy where Jews ran the world, yet Jewish communities were mostly powerless in confronting Nazi Germany
Ok serious question is there any other time in history when everyone, including those who committed the atrocities, agree on how vile they were? The actions of the Nazi party, and Germany as a whole, are just so well documented and so impossible to justify that what choice does Germany have but to acknowledge them? And even then wehraboos are a thing as are holocaust deniers.
Ok serious question is there any other time in history when everyone, including those who committed the atrocities, agree on how vile they were? The actions of the Nazi party, and Germany as a whole, are just so well documented and so impossible to justify that what choice does Germany have but to acknowledge them? And even then wehraboos are a thing as are holocaust deniers.
There is literally nothing that everyone agrees on.
I once took a political science class on genocide and there was this Turkish exchange student who smugly denied that the Armenian Genocide was a thing that happened
Eventually no one ever referenced it again just not to trigger the guy anymore
Boy I'd love to see what would happen if he tried that in my neck of the woods.
Since the start of the month I see at least a few cars driving around with Armenian flags on them every time I go outside.
0
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Ok serious question is there any other time in history when everyone, including those who committed the atrocities, agree on how vile they were? The actions of the Nazi party, and Germany as a whole, are just so well documented and so impossible to justify that what choice does Germany have but to acknowledge them? And even then wehraboos are a thing as are holocaust deniers.
Unlikely. Germany happened to hit a historical hat trick where mass media was tightly controlled yet highly effective, they had just perpetrated one of the worst acts of collective violence against noncombatants in history, and they had just lost a war against a group of nations who were about to control the narrative of the next several decades.
The post-war period was dominated by America (and countries heavily influenced by America) and the USSR (and countries heavily influenced by the USSR.)
Stalin was one of history's greatest monsters who almost certainly killed more innocent people than Hitler, but the USSR and later Russia largely escaped the need to atone for their crimes because they were on the winning side. Given the number of Nazis who died on the Eastern Front, it's really easy for them to dismiss the Western powers as a sideshow and ignore the Ukrainian famine and gulag deaths as part of the incredible death toll of the Great Patriotic War.
Meanwhile, the Allies stumbled ass-backwards into the greatest Get Out of the Hague Free Card in history when the scope and depth of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust became apparent during the last days of the war. None of the Allied commanders gave two shits about shutting down Germany's death camps until the war was practically over, and America was definitely turning away Jewish refugee ships when they could have so easily been bombing railheads leading to concentration camps. America and the UK have never really had to deal with the mass bombing of civilian populations or the use of atomic bombs against entire cities, because Nazis.
Japan took a fair amount of shit for their war crimes, but nothing close to what the Germans got. At the end of the day, none of the people the Japanese really abused would have a global voice for another couple of decades, and by then most of them were Communists anyway. It's fairly telling that the 2400 soldiers and sailors who were killed at Pearl Harbor get more press today than the bare minimum 40,000 civilians who were killed in Nanking.
So yeah, it's unlikely that anyone will be called to account as completely as the Nazis were. Any power who commits similar atrocities in the future will likely be media-savvy enough to protect themselves from some of the historical backlash when and if they lose.
Jedoc on
+2
Dr. Flamingo49 Gilded Disc Perceives the SunRegistered Userregular
So yeah, it's unlikely that anyone will be called to account as completely as the Nazis were. Any power who commits similar atrocities in the future will likely be media-savvy enough to protect themselves from some of the historical backlash when and if they lose.
The South was able to spin their fight being about states rights and not slavery, which astonishes me perpetually
+3
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
It doesn't astonish me because the South had been practicing mental gymnastics and perfecting their own lies to justify slavery for decades before the war, so doing it afterward was just a continuation of what they had been doing.
So yeah, it's unlikely that anyone will be called to account as completely as the Nazis were. Any power who commits similar atrocities in the future will likely be media-savvy enough to protect themselves from some of the historical backlash when and if they lose.
The South was able to spin their fight being about states rights and not slavery, which astonishes me perpetually
They'd been spinning slavery that way since the founding of the United States. It was never totally true either way. Up to the Civil War they had made it so that there had to be a slave state for every free state, regardless of what the people in the state wanted. There were occasional times where individual states fought the federal government, such as the multiple instances of nullification, but the only thing that unified the south when it came to "state rights" was slavery. Every instance of "state's rights" revolves around the idea that they want something in their state, whether the majority of people in the state want it or not, and regardless of how legal it is to do it.
Ok serious question is there any other time in history when everyone, including those who committed the atrocities, agree on how vile they were? The actions of the Nazi party, and Germany as a whole, are just so well documented and so impossible to justify that what choice does Germany have but to acknowledge them? And even then wehraboos are a thing as are holocaust deniers.
Unlikely. Germany happened to hit a historical hat trick where mass media was tightly controlled yet highly effective, they had just perpetrated one of the worst acts of collective violence against noncombatants in history, and they had just lost a war against a group of nations who were about to control the narrative of the next several decades.
The post-war period was dominated by America (and countries heavily influenced by America) and the USSR (and countries heavily influenced by the USSR.)
Stalin was one of history's greatest monsters who almost certainly killed more innocent people than Hitler, but the USSR and later Russia largely escaped the need to atone for their crimes because they were on the winning side. Given the number of Nazis who died on the Eastern Front, it's really easy for them to dismiss the Western powers as a sideshow and ignore the Ukrainian famine and gulag deaths as part of the incredible death toll of the Great Patriotic War.
Meanwhile, the Allies stumbled ass-backwards into the greatest Get Out of the Hague Free Card in history when the scope and depth of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust became apparent during the last days of the war. None of the Allied commanders gave two shits about shutting down Germany's death camps until the war was practically over, and America was definitely turning away Jewish refugee ships when they could have so easily been bombing railheads leading to concentration camps. America and the UK have never really had to deal with the mass bombing of civilian populations or the use of atomic bombs against entire cities, because Nazis.
Japan took a fair amount of shit for their war crimes, but nothing close to what the Germans got. At the end of the day, none of the people the Japanese really abused would have a global voice for another couple of decades, and by then most of them were Communists anyway. It's fairly telling that the 2400 soldiers and sailors who were killed at Pearl Harbor get more press today than the bare minimum 40,000 civilians who were killed in Nanking.
So yeah, it's unlikely that anyone will be called to account as completely as the Nazis were. Any power who commits similar atrocities in the future will likely be media-savvy enough to protect themselves from some of the historical backlash when and if they lose.
I think there was partly a racist or paternalistic element as to how the Japanese were collectively absolved after World War II - they were mostly portrayed as religiously indoctrinated subjects who culturally or biologically had no choice but to follow the will of their leaders
In contrast, towards the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath, there was a strong idea that Germans should be collectively punished - for example by mass expulsions from Eastern Europe or by the deliberate use of hunger against German civilians
I believe that MacArthur thought he could control the Japanese people through their emperor was also partly an extension of this idea
Sorta like Lovecraft has his Egyptians instinctively prostrate themselves before Nyarlathotep
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
There were actually several geopolitical reasons for the United States to absolve the Japanese of responsibility for war crimes in a way that they did not do for the European Axis powers.
I thought Alastair Horne's most recent book, Hubris, covered these fairly well in its latter half.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
0
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
can anyone point me to some reliable, unbiased sources of information about soviet russia, particularly about the extent of religious persecution there?
because i've been trying to track down whatever i can and it just seems like it's difficult to find anything that seems impartial.
granted, i'm sure it's hard to separate out the propaganda from the truth in many cases, on either side, but i hear conflicting information from so many sources and it's driving me nuts
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
can anyone point me to some reliable, unbiased sources of information about soviet russia, particularly about the extent of religious persecution there?
because i've been trying to track down whatever i can and it just seems like it's difficult to find anything that seems impartial.
granted, i'm sure it's hard to separate out the propaganda from the truth in many cases, on either side, but i hear conflicting information from so many sources and it's driving me nuts
I can't recall any writers at the moment but I'll have a look when I get home. As a general note on the subject, though, try to avoid stuff written by Westerners, especially Americans. Try to avoid stuff written by exiled White Russians. Try to read stuff written by Russians post the fall of the USSR, because they have the knowledge of the cultural context and freer access to sources.
can anyone point me to some reliable, unbiased sources of information about soviet russia, particularly about the extent of religious persecution there?
because i've been trying to track down whatever i can and it just seems like it's difficult to find anything that seems impartial.
granted, i'm sure it's hard to separate out the propaganda from the truth in many cases, on either side, but i hear conflicting information from so many sources and it's driving me nuts
I have a friend who researched Judaism in the Soviet Union, and I'm still in contact with my teacher. I'll get some juicy sources.
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can anyone point me to some reliable, unbiased sources of information about soviet russia, particularly about the extent of religious persecution there?
because i've been trying to track down whatever i can and it just seems like it's difficult to find anything that seems impartial.
granted, i'm sure it's hard to separate out the propaganda from the truth in many cases, on either side, but i hear conflicting information from so many sources and it's driving me nuts
I can't recall any writers at the moment but I'll have a look when I get home. As a general note on the subject, though, try to avoid stuff written by Westerners, especially Americans. Try to avoid stuff written by exiled White Russians. Try to read stuff written by Russians post the fall of the USSR, because they have the knowledge of the cultural context and freer access to sources.
hey now, some of us americans aren't patriotic jackasses
...good look finding them
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Guns, Germs, and Steel is a perfectly fine theory. It is not the be-all and end all-of history books though. The author tends to work in fairly broad strokes, which sometimes glosses over things that might contradict his theory, and, you know, there are plenty of other theories around the same subject matter that conflict with his.
Ultimately, I think it just suffered from being a work of history that got too popular. There is a pretty regular pattern that you see happen, when a history book becomes popular amongst the general public, where everyone starts spouting off the entire thing as fact, without realizing that contrasting historical accounts and theories are kind of a whole thing in the study of history.
Believe the shorter post every time, truth endures any brevity
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Like, it's a very similar thing to books on a certain scientific topic. People are arguing about that shit, you just aren't going to see that, and generally, there is a shitload more nuance going on than is presented in the book, because the readers aren't going to get the context for it.
+2
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
For the record, I personally think it's pretty much shit too, I was just being diplomatic about it.
The book prides itself on being an interdisciplinary work, and I think that's more or less what both caused its success and sank it for a lot of folks who are very focused on their own disciplines. Coming pretty strongly from a history background/perspective, I'm not a big fan - I think it uses dangerously broad strokes in its explanations and reduces populations to numbers in a data set, rather than living people with at least some autonomy - but I can also easily see where people coming from a biological perspective or from an economist's perspective could easily fall in love with that.
It's also hella Eurocentric, so uh, take that word of warning.
I believe what jedoc meant is that the UK has never had to come to terms with the fact that they also dropped a lot of bombs on civilian populations, not that the UK never had its civilians bombed
Ok, so what's an actually good history book? I've finished a couple of Napoleon-centric books and I'm ready for nearly any other time and place. Bonus points for something covering the warring states period of medieval Japan, as that's an area I like very much.
Ok, so what's an actually good history book? I've finished a couple of Napoleon-centric books and I'm ready for nearly any other time and place. Bonus points for something covering the warring states period of medieval Japan, as that's an area I like very much.
here are some of my favorite history books:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a fun combination of science and history, though it's fairly Eurocentric
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is depressing and rage-inducing but pretty much required reading as far as I'm concerned
Stasiland by Anna Funder is a really fantastic look at the East German police state (for extra fun you can go and watch The Lives of Others afterwards)
The Professor and the Madman is a small story about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (aka the best dictionary ever) and how it almost didn't happen and how the fact that it did is largely thanks to two guys, one of whom was definitively insane
Longitude by Dava Sobel is mainly about John Harrison, the man who made the first clock that was accurate enough to be used at sea for navigation purposes, but it's also got sailing and intrigue and sabotage, with guest appearances by Nevil Maskelyne
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the italics places emphasis, you see
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There is literally nothing that everyone agrees on.
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Boy I'd love to see what would happen if he tried that in my neck of the woods.
Since the start of the month I see at least a few cars driving around with Armenian flags on them every time I go outside.
Unlikely. Germany happened to hit a historical hat trick where mass media was tightly controlled yet highly effective, they had just perpetrated one of the worst acts of collective violence against noncombatants in history, and they had just lost a war against a group of nations who were about to control the narrative of the next several decades.
The post-war period was dominated by America (and countries heavily influenced by America) and the USSR (and countries heavily influenced by the USSR.)
Stalin was one of history's greatest monsters who almost certainly killed more innocent people than Hitler, but the USSR and later Russia largely escaped the need to atone for their crimes because they were on the winning side. Given the number of Nazis who died on the Eastern Front, it's really easy for them to dismiss the Western powers as a sideshow and ignore the Ukrainian famine and gulag deaths as part of the incredible death toll of the Great Patriotic War.
Meanwhile, the Allies stumbled ass-backwards into the greatest Get Out of the Hague Free Card in history when the scope and depth of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust became apparent during the last days of the war. None of the Allied commanders gave two shits about shutting down Germany's death camps until the war was practically over, and America was definitely turning away Jewish refugee ships when they could have so easily been bombing railheads leading to concentration camps. America and the UK have never really had to deal with the mass bombing of civilian populations or the use of atomic bombs against entire cities, because Nazis.
Japan took a fair amount of shit for their war crimes, but nothing close to what the Germans got. At the end of the day, none of the people the Japanese really abused would have a global voice for another couple of decades, and by then most of them were Communists anyway. It's fairly telling that the 2400 soldiers and sailors who were killed at Pearl Harbor get more press today than the bare minimum 40,000 civilians who were killed in Nanking.
So yeah, it's unlikely that anyone will be called to account as completely as the Nazis were. Any power who commits similar atrocities in the future will likely be media-savvy enough to protect themselves from some of the historical backlash when and if they lose.
Hmmmm I don't know about that...
The South was able to spin their fight being about states rights and not slavery, which astonishes me perpetually
Still pisses me off how much it still works.
They'd been spinning slavery that way since the founding of the United States. It was never totally true either way. Up to the Civil War they had made it so that there had to be a slave state for every free state, regardless of what the people in the state wanted. There were occasional times where individual states fought the federal government, such as the multiple instances of nullification, but the only thing that unified the south when it came to "state rights" was slavery. Every instance of "state's rights" revolves around the idea that they want something in their state, whether the majority of people in the state want it or not, and regardless of how legal it is to do it.
I think there was partly a racist or paternalistic element as to how the Japanese were collectively absolved after World War II - they were mostly portrayed as religiously indoctrinated subjects who culturally or biologically had no choice but to follow the will of their leaders
In contrast, towards the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath, there was a strong idea that Germans should be collectively punished - for example by mass expulsions from Eastern Europe or by the deliberate use of hunger against German civilians
Sorta like Lovecraft has his Egyptians instinctively prostrate themselves before Nyarlathotep
I thought Alastair Horne's most recent book, Hubris, covered these fairly well in its latter half.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
because i've been trying to track down whatever i can and it just seems like it's difficult to find anything that seems impartial.
granted, i'm sure it's hard to separate out the propaganda from the truth in many cases, on either side, but i hear conflicting information from so many sources and it's driving me nuts
I've taken some classes on it, but I don't have any sources handy at this point in time.
I can't recall any writers at the moment but I'll have a look when I get home. As a general note on the subject, though, try to avoid stuff written by Westerners, especially Americans. Try to avoid stuff written by exiled White Russians. Try to read stuff written by Russians post the fall of the USSR, because they have the knowledge of the cultural context and freer access to sources.
um
I was that asshole who could not shut the fuck up in college.
I have a friend who researched Judaism in the Soviet Union, and I'm still in contact with my teacher. I'll get some juicy sources.
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
hey now, some of us americans aren't patriotic jackasses
...good look finding them
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Ultimately, I think it just suffered from being a work of history that got too popular. There is a pretty regular pattern that you see happen, when a history book becomes popular amongst the general public, where everyone starts spouting off the entire thing as fact, without realizing that contrasting historical accounts and theories are kind of a whole thing in the study of history.
It's shit
See, this is what I'm talking about!
(Though, thanks.)
It's no 1491
Believe the shorter post every time, truth endures any brevity
The book prides itself on being an interdisciplinary work, and I think that's more or less what both caused its success and sank it for a lot of folks who are very focused on their own disciplines. Coming pretty strongly from a history background/perspective, I'm not a big fan - I think it uses dangerously broad strokes in its explanations and reduces populations to numbers in a data set, rather than living people with at least some autonomy - but I can also easily see where people coming from a biological perspective or from an economist's perspective could easily fall in love with that.
It's also hella Eurocentric, so uh, take that word of warning.
Stuff which looks plausible on paper but doesn't really hold up under scrutiny and is built on some very problematic assumptions
Specifically all of the environmental determinism, which, much like evolutionary psychology, is often used to justify certain forms of racism.
Here's a thing that demonstrates the scale of what they dealt with.
I believe what jedoc meant is that the UK has never had to come to terms with the fact that they also dropped a lot of bombs on civilian populations, not that the UK never had its civilians bombed
No.
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here are some of my favorite history books:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a fun combination of science and history, though it's fairly Eurocentric
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is depressing and rage-inducing but pretty much required reading as far as I'm concerned
Stasiland by Anna Funder is a really fantastic look at the East German police state (for extra fun you can go and watch The Lives of Others afterwards)
The Professor and the Madman is a small story about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (aka the best dictionary ever) and how it almost didn't happen and how the fact that it did is largely thanks to two guys, one of whom was definitively insane
Longitude by Dava Sobel is mainly about John Harrison, the man who made the first clock that was accurate enough to be used at sea for navigation purposes, but it's also got sailing and intrigue and sabotage, with guest appearances by Nevil Maskelyne