Perception of Communism after Nazi victory
- Thread starter Ghost8472
- Start date
Snake Featherston
Banned
^Precisely. The Communists provided as Alexander Herzen said "Nicholas's Barracks transformed." That's evil in a very literal and visceral sense, but it's a far cry from the technologically upgraded Mongols the Nazis were. In some ways, too, there's the irony that the Nazis for all their claims to represent some version of traditional Germany did more to obliterate German tradition than East Germany ever did. And this is without factoring in what Hitler *wanted* to do to Germany in the last days of the war.....
Wolfpaw
Banned
Ah, NATO: "Keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down."Well, there had to be *some* way to justify creating anew a German armed force....
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Plus a lot of the people who push the idea most vociferously in Ukraine today, use it as a stick to beat the ev0l Muscovite oppressors TM.
While at the same time whitewashing the likes of Stephan Bandera (whose movement was rather like the Iron Guard). Never mind the fact that millions of Russians/Russo-Ukrainians or the far higher proportion of the Kazak population died due to Stalin's epic fuck-up..
Just wanted to chime in with this observation here -- and I apologize if someone has brought something similar up earlier; but my eyes glazed over after the first page and a half of competing evulz.
Working with teenagers doing tutoring, I've gathered over the last few years that it is not uncommon for them to have history teachers in high school propose in some way that that the USSR was the 'real enemy' in WW2. This isn't in any textbooks, mind you, and I only hear this secondhand... through kids who, by definition, I know because they're having academic problems
But, I'm also in touch with some home-schooling students, teachers, and groups... and there, I have directly seen that argument presented as historical fact. I'm most vividly remembering coming across a home-school study guide for parents asking their children/students to write an essay explaining "why America chose to fight for the wrong side".
So y'know, this does not seem like a totally ATL thing so much to me ;(
Working with teenagers doing tutoring, I've gathered over the last few years that it is not uncommon for them to have history teachers in high school propose in some way that that the USSR was the 'real enemy' in WW2. This isn't in any textbooks, mind you, and I only hear this secondhand... through kids who, by definition, I know because they're having academic problems
But, I'm also in touch with some home-schooling students, teachers, and groups... and there, I have directly seen that argument presented as historical fact. I'm most vividly remembering coming across a home-school study guide for parents asking their children/students to write an essay explaining "why America chose to fight for the wrong side".
So y'know, this does not seem like a totally ATL thing so much to me ;(
Wolfpaw
Banned
It's more like, "Would you rather eat shit, or be enslaved and murdered for what your grandparents may have been?"
The revolting trope of "Nazis are morally equivalent to Communists!" is a relic of the Cold War psychosis that we really ought to have shed by now.
Snake Featherston
Banned
No, it's really not. It's worth asking if they are so all-fired equal why it is that the USSR had any ability to moderate in any sense at all where the Nazi trend was to barbarism that grew worse with each passing year. And it frankly is not morally or honestly proper to compare Tsarism's more efficient and more evil twisted counterpart with the Nazi ideology that held the slaughter of tens of millions as a positive goal to strive for and to reward people for successes in accomplishing.
I Blame Communism
Banned
If we want to have any useful understand of what these regimes were, what they represented, and how to avoid their fate in the future, we must shed this wishy-washy attitude and engage with the comparative facts.
Some people seem to find totalling up the numbers and comparing the statistics distasteful when it's a matter of mass-murder. Fine and valid, but such people shouldn't claim that because they don't want to know the answer it doesn't exist, and in doing so sink to absurdities. The British Empire was brutal and horrible by anyone's standards, as was the plight of black Americans in the south before civil rights. So I suppose they were all exact moral equals?
I prefer to indulge the Scottish taste for grim exactitude.
If we're going to consider the Holodomor a genocide, let's not forget the genocides of the English: Bengal Famine of 1770 (~10 million), the Orissa famine of 1866 (4-5 million), the Great Famine of 1876-78 (~5 million), the Indian famine of 1896-97 (~1 million),the Indian Famine of 1899-1900 (1-5 million), the Bengal famine of 1943 (2-4 million), etc, etc.
And that's just in India! Native Americans ran to Spanish-controlled areas, fleeing from the English-controlled ones! They annihilated in their totality the native population of Tazmania. And so forth, and so on. The English were worse than both the Soviets and the Nazis, is what I'm saying.
And that's just in India! Native Americans ran to Spanish-controlled areas, fleeing from the English-controlled ones! They annihilated in their totality the native population of Tazmania. And so forth, and so on. The English were worse than both the Soviets and the Nazis, is what I'm saying.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Brrrrrrrritish, Brrrrrrrrritish, dammit, Brrrrrrrrrritish! Let's have, in accordance with the best Scots method, the grim numbers:
One third of university educations in the American colonies, 1680-1780: Scottish degrees.
Thirty governors and lieutenant-governors in North America, 1707-1800: Scots.
One in four of the British officer corps in North America, 1760: Scots.
Seventy-eight percent of HBC employees, 1799: Orkneymen.
Sixty-two percent of NWC employees, 1800: from the shires of Aberdeen, Banff, and Inverness.
Sixty percent of the slave-owning elite in Antigua, 1707-1775: Scots.
Sixty percent of doctors in Antigua, 1750: Scots.
All three governors appointed to the Ceded Islands, 1763: Scots.
Forty-five percent of inventories over £1000 at death in Jamaica, 1771-71: Scots.
One in three colonels in the EIC army, India, 1740: Scots.
One in three officers in the EIC army, Bengal, 1775: Scots.
Forty-seven percent of writers, fifty percent of surgeons, EIC, Bengal 1774-1785: Scots.
Sixty percent of free merchants in Bengal, Madras, and Calcutta, 1776-1785: Scots.
Thirty-seven percent of private merchant houses in Calcutta, 1813: Scots.
If you deny our imperial past, what will we feel gnawing Calvinist guilt about?
Anyway, there is a substantial difference here. The British empire existed for a great many lifetimes across areas which, before the telegram, took months to communicate. Most of the mass-deaths caused by its policies deserve to be marked down as particular events, whereas Nazism - taking place in twelve years under a small circle of men - is an event in itself.
One ought certainly to remember that the Nazis consciously drew inspiration from the capitalist empires of previous centuries, or that in that particular timeframe the British empire was still showing itself as capable of callousness as Stalinism and just less interested in organising or sustaining it. But for me to accept that the 'English' (British) are a group with a historical existence equal to the Nazis, or even Stalin's ruling elite, requires me to accept nation-state history, which I never do. We're not comparing 'the English' to 'the Russians' and 'the Germans', which would itself by a thoroughly futile exercise.
One third of university educations in the American colonies, 1680-1780: Scottish degrees.
Thirty governors and lieutenant-governors in North America, 1707-1800: Scots.
One in four of the British officer corps in North America, 1760: Scots.
Seventy-eight percent of HBC employees, 1799: Orkneymen.
Sixty-two percent of NWC employees, 1800: from the shires of Aberdeen, Banff, and Inverness.
Sixty percent of the slave-owning elite in Antigua, 1707-1775: Scots.
Sixty percent of doctors in Antigua, 1750: Scots.
All three governors appointed to the Ceded Islands, 1763: Scots.
Forty-five percent of inventories over £1000 at death in Jamaica, 1771-71: Scots.
One in three colonels in the EIC army, India, 1740: Scots.
One in three officers in the EIC army, Bengal, 1775: Scots.
Forty-seven percent of writers, fifty percent of surgeons, EIC, Bengal 1774-1785: Scots.
Sixty percent of free merchants in Bengal, Madras, and Calcutta, 1776-1785: Scots.
Thirty-seven percent of private merchant houses in Calcutta, 1813: Scots.
If you deny our imperial past, what will we feel gnawing Calvinist guilt about?
Anyway, there is a substantial difference here. The British empire existed for a great many lifetimes across areas which, before the telegram, took months to communicate. Most of the mass-deaths caused by its policies deserve to be marked down as particular events, whereas Nazism - taking place in twelve years under a small circle of men - is an event in itself.
One ought certainly to remember that the Nazis consciously drew inspiration from the capitalist empires of previous centuries, or that in that particular timeframe the British empire was still showing itself as capable of callousness as Stalinism and just less interested in organising or sustaining it. But for me to accept that the 'English' (British) are a group with a historical existence equal to the Nazis, or even Stalin's ruling elite, requires me to accept nation-state history, which I never do. We're not comparing 'the English' to 'the Russians' and 'the Germans', which would itself by a thoroughly futile exercise.
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Ghost8472
Banned
Well if its a matter of numbers: the Mongol conquest cost 30 to 60 Million lives and they were partially responsible for bringing the black death to Europe and the Middle East which killed another 100 to 200 million.....
I mean they massacred the whole population of Baghdad in a week-
100 000 to 1 Million massacred civilians in a week - and that was after Baghdad offered its surrender........
Oh and dont forget the Great Irish famine - over 1 Million Irish starved to death and the Brits didnt do anything to help - just mention it to get away from the: Look at what the evil Europeans did to the poor people outside of Europe. They did it to themselves as well so stop whining around.
About communism and Nazism:
What bothers me is the fact that nearly all Nazi crimes were done during war, while most communist crimes were done during peace time.
From 1933-1939 the Nazis killed perhaps 10 000 or 20 000 people
While from 1933-1939 the Communists in the USSR killed around 5 to 8 Million people.
Also during peace time the Nazis allowed and encouraged Jews and all unwanted elements to leave their country - so before the war started one could escape.
While the communists closed their borders and there wasnt a chance for escape.
Also by 1939 there were some 25 000 prisoners in nazi concentration camps while the USSR by this time had some 900 000 people in the Gulags and another 900 000 or so "specially displaced people".
It was the war which turned the Nazis into absolute monsters - while communists in the USSR, Eastern, Europe, China, or Korea ect commited their greatest crimes during peace time.
I Blame Communism
Banned
I'll leave the false GULAG equivalence to Wolfpaw: he's got the numbers and as we have seen, Scotsmen are raised to believe that figures have power over the universe.
So, who started the war? The Nazis. What did they spend their whole peacetime regime doing? Building a war-machine and rejecting alternatives to total war. They were forced into it by us meanies? Nope. They were planning all along to wage war in order to get at the people whom it was their world-strategy to exterminate and enslave.
These were totalitarian regimes trying to consolidate their power internally and internationally. For Russia under Stalin this meant using systematised brutality to build infrastructure, move populations, and in general exploit the resource-base: this wasn't even really new in Russian history, only totalitarian methods and technology.
For wee Germany, with extensive capital resources but basically a medium country, this meant carving out a vast new empire and exterminating the population. That was the great difference in their character from a geopolitical viewpoint: that the Nazis had homicidal racism at the core of their belief is of course an allied phenomenon.
And I don't see what is meant by the references to Ireland being a reason to 'stop whining'. It is only further evidence of the British Empire's brutality and callousness, isn't it? Nobody said it was limited to the different races of fellow. In fact the British empire was often a bit shit for the average Briton.
So, who started the war? The Nazis. What did they spend their whole peacetime regime doing? Building a war-machine and rejecting alternatives to total war. They were forced into it by us meanies? Nope. They were planning all along to wage war in order to get at the people whom it was their world-strategy to exterminate and enslave.
These were totalitarian regimes trying to consolidate their power internally and internationally. For Russia under Stalin this meant using systematised brutality to build infrastructure, move populations, and in general exploit the resource-base: this wasn't even really new in Russian history, only totalitarian methods and technology.
For wee Germany, with extensive capital resources but basically a medium country, this meant carving out a vast new empire and exterminating the population. That was the great difference in their character from a geopolitical viewpoint: that the Nazis had homicidal racism at the core of their belief is of course an allied phenomenon.
And I don't see what is meant by the references to Ireland being a reason to 'stop whining'. It is only further evidence of the British Empire's brutality and callousness, isn't it? Nobody said it was limited to the different races of fellow. In fact the British empire was often a bit shit for the average Briton.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Though not, as Scots emphatically were, over-represented, the Welsh were not under-represented either. A Cambrophone Welshman ran the British Empire at one of its moments of great exertion.
And of course one wonders where the cleared Scots Highlanders or the starving English handloom weavers fit into this bloody-minded nation-state history? Or the thousands of Irishmen who manned the ranks of the British army while their home-country was being ruled and exploited? Or indeed the rajas and cotton-gazillionaires of India who benefitted materially from the beggaring of theirs?
I'd prefer 'the British empire fucked the world', which was the advantage of being true. Imperial systems are destructive and anti-human, but using their existence to show that 'the English' and 'the Scots' (whatever they were) are or were all bad people is silly. No imperial system represents a single 'nation' (whatever that is) exterminating and enslaving other groups with perfect uniformity in their own ranks and without the help of others in imperial frameworks. The Nazis tried and look what happened to them.
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Ghost8472
Banned
Yet who supported them in the invasion of Poland???
Who gave them a lot of resources and fuel without which the Offensive against France would have had much smaller chance of sucess??
Who gave them metereological data during the Battle of Britain??
Who is worse?
The one who starts a war or the one who supports the one starting a war??
I Blame Communism
Banned
The one who starts a war. Simple, innit?
The USSR abbetted Hitler from '39 to '41, yes, although from a military point of view their actions in Poland made no substantial difference (they actually had to move their plans ahead because of the Nazi success). Prior to this they had been their only consistent opponents, for instance during the Czech crisis. In both cases they were pursuing a cynical and at times disastrously misconceived foreign policy - a bit like Britain and France at Munich. Britain, France, and the USSR all saw their interests in basically similar terms: avoiding the destruction and uncertainty of total war from damaging their own respective patches, for one thing. The USSR thought that the Germans, locked in an indecisive struggle with Britain, wouldn't be able to turn on them.
The Nazis saw German interests in terms of carving out a colonial empire in eastern Europe and massacring its people, which A) is a bittie different and B) went on primarily in the occupied USSR after '41. You'd struggle to say that the USSR supported them in starting that particular phase of the conflict.
This is an intriguing tendency: not trying to hide the fact that the Nazis were more brutal, destructive, and irrational by far, but instead trying to use some curious argument to 'cancel out' these facts and show that the commies were worse anyway.
I'm reminded of discussions around here of anti-semitism. One gets a troubling impression from some who bang the 'Slavs were always more anti-semitic' drum (as it were a measurable quantity, not a set of attitudes arising from pressures in society). They seem to believe that the Holocaust was somehow so much of an aberration in terms of history that we can actually remove it from the tallies. Probably it is down to being troubles by the way the world's most evil regime arose from liberal capitalist democracy, whereas we prefer to think of history in terms of linear progress.
Ghost8472
Banned
Giving someone the means to start a war is as bad as starting a war.
"Oh so you want to murder someone? Dont worry I give you an alibi oh and BTW hers a brand new gun".
Yes the USSR invading Poland and Finnland and the Baltic and Bessarabia was done reluctantly only because of fear of Germany
Yes the Nazi concept of killing people because of their race/ethnicity is different from the communist concept of killing people because of their social class.
Allthough why were the 172 000 Koreans deported in 1937, or all Poles and Germans removed from the Soviet armament industry during the Great Terror? Because the Commies sometimes did kill/deport people just because of their ethnicity.
And had the USSR not supplied and helped Germany from 1939-1941 Germany wouldnt have probably been able to launch Barbarossa - and even if than with much smaller sucess.
So the USSR had it coming - and is at least partially responsible for the invasion - since they made it possible.
The fact is that de facto all Nazi crimes happened during war
While most Communist crimes happened during peace time
One could argue that the Nazi crimes happened because of war - while communism killed around the clock during war and peace time.
Its also true that from 1933-1939 the Nazis had killed and imprisoned lets say 100 000 people. While the USSR was at around 20 Million killed and imprisioned and deported people by 1939 - allthough they had a headstart of allmost 10 years.
I Blame Communism
Banned
If this were true, America would presumably have arrested the owners of all gun-shops. But clearly totalitarian mass-murderers are held to a much higher standard than ordinary people.
To return this absurd metaphor to reality, where did Germany get its guns and its alibi? From its own resources. It spend years building guns, and was able to manufacture an alibi to its own satisfaction (not that of anybody else, but what did they care?). It was equipping itself for war all along. A misconceived Soviet diplomatic about-face just helped.
You are aware that before the M-R pact the Entente and the Soviets were in tentative negotiations for a pact to contain Germany?
Yes the USSR invading Poland and Finnland and the Baltic and Bessarabia was done reluctantly only because of fear of Germany
That was certainly the immediate catalyst. The Soviets had spent the thirties observing non-aggression pacts with these countries and trying to arrange an anti-Nazi coalition. The exhaustion of that strategy suggested another. If the Soviets had been motivated by crazed expansionism rather than evil-bastard logic, why didn't they extend overtures to the Germans in 1933?
Yes, it absolutely is. Take Mikhail Bulgakov, or General Brusilov, as examples from among millions of people of the old tsarist elites and middling sorts who found new lives under the new regime. Destroying a social class means re-arranging society - which can be done with terrible violence - not killing all the people of a hereditary group. Britain destroyed the social class of pit-owners by nationalising the pits. 'Cor, wicked wicked us.
So when we say 'kill/deport', we in fact mean 'deport'? The Soviets did indeed conduct plenty of frank ethnic cleansing, generally for what were supposed to be security reasons. So, indeed, did the WAllies on a much smaller scale and with better infrastructure.
And if we hadn't signed Munich, there would have been no war, or one with much less German success. But people fuck up all the time.
So did Lloyd George and Martin Luther and Arminius and the man who invented the boot.
You're both picking and choosing (all large Soviet ethnic cleansings also took place during the war, and the most lethal period in the GULAG; clearly they don't count) and employing remarkable perspective (murdering socialists and ending free expression is okay, as long as you plan to exterminate millions of people later).
And one could argue that the war happened because of the Nazi regime. It did. Take away Nazism and no recognisable war, whatever this spraff about the USSR and the M.W.I.T.B.
I've explained the difference in character between the Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism and why it matters.
Snake Featherston
Banned
No actually we can't say this at all. They began the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. Kristallnacht was before the war. The Nazis cut the teeth of their concentration camps on ethnic Germans, and were the first to do that "Purge" thing. Hitler was carefully reducing any prospect of challenging him via any means whatsoever before the outbreak of the war. The Nazi camp system cut its teeth on Germans. Nazi industrial murder as per the Death Camps also began on the various categories of ethnic Germans targeted by the euthanasia campaign, meaning the Nazis learned how to make the death camps work by targeting ethnic Germans first and only went to use this on the Jews in 1942, after they'd been machine-gunning men, women, and children in the back for years.
Most crucially the Hossbach Memorandum makes it clear that the war was the goal the whole time so there's no means for the Nazis to avoid a war and its radicalizing effects and stay Nazis.