Opinion of the Mongols?

me said:
Just like German defeat in WWI could be blamed on the Jewish Backstab, and chaos of Weimar Republic on Jewish manipulations,
Waitamoment. Isn't history about understanding things, or is it just a particular hobby of yours to go around accusing people of being Nazis?

My mistake. I wanted to say blaming the Mongol tribal conflicts on "the Chinese" doesn't make sense. I'm not accusing you of being a Nazi. Sorry for the analogy, I'd remove it.

Actually, forget it. if you're so hooked on one particular time and place that you can't see past it you're not worth talking to.

Fine. Let's stop here.
 
Also, that Hilter meant to utterly exterminate his victims, having the majority of them killed and the survivors literally enslaved? The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was naked aggression, unjustified under every respect, but its ultimate aim was not the total annihilation of Ethiopians, neither in terms of their physical existence or their culture*. The invasion and (especially) subsequent counterinsurgency campaign were furthermore conducted with exceptional brutality, even for the standards of what deemed acceptable in colonial war against "savages" (and this tells a lot). The Italians certainly viewed the Ethiopians as racially and culturally inferior, with rare exceptions. But their aim was about "ordinary" conquest, that is, domination, landgrab and loot, not genocide.

But basic is not that different. Move in, grab land, reduce native population to servitute, exploit land for resources. It was more brutal but in principle they were not that different. and Italains get more of a free pass than Germans do. also Japanese actions in China are not seen as same, at elast as far as West is concerned. Because Italians were colonialists acting agaisnt African natives and Japanese were, well, asians doing stuff to other asians. Germans, however, were white Europeans doing nasty stuff to other white Europeans, even if they were jsut honorary ones.

So yeah, Geran actions were jsut out of place for the time and as such are not acceptable. Let's be honest here, if Hitler were a 15 or 16 century European king his wars would be seen as perfectly normal. Hell, even Napoleon is not seen as that agressive because in early 19th century such things were still acceptable

Nazi war aims against Poland and Russia** (and the European Jewish and Roma communities, if you can call it a "war") explicitly included the physical and cultural erasure of the targeted peoples from existence, including their past existence. it is quite possible that, had the Nazis got their way, in some generation nobody would have known that there ever had been such a thing as, say, "Poland". Mussolini and his ilk never envisioned anything comparable.***

As I've said, by 1930s white Europeans were not supposed to do that anymore, specially to other whites.

*Although whatever true belief was behind the "bringing civilization" bit of the utter bullshit use to justify the aggression implicitly contained the notion that Ethiopian cultures were to be ultimately destroyed to a large extent. To my knowledge, no policy to that effect seems to have been seriously planned, let alone implemented.
Italian rule actually did some lip service to local cultural tradition (or its understanding of it) on occasion, what it seemed expedient, not unlike other colonial empires, notably the British in India or Nigeria.

Plus they were Africans so different class than French or even Russians. Not as fair game as Africans of second half of 19th century but still acceptable to be conquered and exploited.

** As they came to be enucleated during the war. I am not sure if there's enough evidence to say that such intentions were clearly entertained by the collective Nazi leadership before 1939.

Nazi war goals, at least as far as actual, detailed goals were concerned, were pretty much made as they went.

*** I some respects, I am under the impression that they came closer in Jugoslavia than in Ethiopia; they perceived the Slavic ethnic presences in places like Istria and Dalmatia as dangerous, intrusive and requiring eradication. Fascist policies in the area were fairly brutal and, unlike in Ethiopia, were meant for cultural annihilation. However, even there they did not explicitly aim at the physical destruction of all the Slovenes and Croats, nor at their enslavement as a racially distinct underclass.
EDIT: They came even closer in Libya, particularly in Cyrenaica. Even there, to the very limited knowledge I have of the relevant documents there was no explicitly attested genocidal intention to the level you see in Generalplan Ost. Which, of course, is of little consolation to hundreds of thousands Libyans deported to concentration camps and the tens of thousands (if not more) who died in the process.

As far as Italy in europe is concerned, you are correct, it was plan for cultural assimilation and destruction of culture, not people per se (OOC: my maternal grandfather found himself on the wrong end of such policies and couple of his brothers died fighting Italians later; the fact that he was also a communist didn't help). But if you remove actual plans for treatment of locals then Gemran and Italian action are not that different. Of course there is the question of who would be victims, which makes one "Bad and uncultured but not fundamentally wrong" and other "Holy pantscrapping fuck, that's so bad we need to, like, hang some people for it!"
 
I'm not sure comparing the Mongol Empire vs the Nazis is going to be particularly productive; but the comparison was probably inevitable and arguably justifiable, given the scale of killing. So I might as well give my view.

The Mongols apparently wiped out entire groups; they certainly wiped out entire cities, and at least in some periods intended to depopulate some areas entirely.

Was this "as bad" as the Nazis? I'm reluctant to say so. Yet, if the Mongols weren't devoted to wiping out a particular group, they certainly weren't averse to doing so. Further, while I recognize and accept the particularly evil aspect of seeking to murder an entire group out of hatred, I can't see that murdering millions of people for other reasons is radically better. A human being is, in my mind, a human being first, and an ethnic label second.

So while I cannot say with good conscience that the Mongols were as bad or evil as the Nazis, I still think their actions were evil in the extreme. Had the Nazis "merely" resorted to Mongol-style killing, for Mongol-style motives, they'd still have been viewed as the most immensely evil regime of all (modern) time. The people under threat by the Mongols, if granted foreknowledge of the Nazis, would've been hard-pressed to see a meaningful difference.

Was Nazism so very despised simply because it's horrors were being enacted in Europe against white people? I don't think so. Though it's not as if Europe hadn't seen its share of evil horrors, both in Europe and in the colonies, nobody had tried an industrial-scale mass murder of Nazi proportions anywhere or at any time. Starving Boer noncombatants in concentration camps had generated outrage; so had the hideous cruelties in the Belgian Congo (eventually). IIRC, various colonial actions had attracted criticism and opposition if on a lesser scale. So I believe that Nazi-scale genocide anywhere in the world would've been viewed as hideously evil, regardless of the skin color of the victims.

Now, back to the OP. I think that, if the Nazi regime had "merely" behaved like the Mongols did -- slaughtering the population of entire cities, attempting to depopulate entire areas, though lacking a genocidal plan for any specific group -- I would condemn it wholeheartedly as evil. Thus, I can only do the same with the Mongol Empire. We might say that times and attitudes were different back then, but the horror the Mongols engendered in so many populations suggests that this isn't entirely true. In any event, the fact remains that tremendous numbers of helpless human beings were murdered by the Mongols of the period, and that fact alone requires a value judgement, which in my case at least, can only go one way.
 
Vicious conquerors under a leader (Genghis Khan) who managed to outsmart enemies numerically superior to him. The tales of their brutality isn't groundless, of course, but hardly far from the norm in the Middle Ages.
 
But basic is not that different. Move in, grab land, reduce native population to servitute, exploit land for resources. It was more brutal but in principle they were not that different. and Italains get more of a free pass than Germans do. also Japanese actions in China are not seen as same, at elast as far as West is concerned. Because Italians were colonialists acting agaisnt African natives and Japanese were, well, asians doing stuff to other asians. Germans, however, were white Europeans doing nasty stuff to other white Europeans, even if they were jsut honorary ones.

So yeah, Geran actions were jsut out of place for the time and as such are not acceptable. Let's be honest here, if Hitler were a 15 or 16 century European king his wars would be seen as perfectly normal. Hell, even Napoleon is not seen as that agressive because in early 19th century such things were still acceptable



As I've said, by 1930s white Europeans were not supposed to do that anymore, specially to other whites.



Plus they were Africans so different class than French or even Russians. Not as fair game as Africans of second half of 19th century but still acceptable to be conquered and exploited.



Nazi war goals, at least as far as actual, detailed goals were concerned, were pretty much made as they went.



As far as Italy in europe is concerned, you are correct, it was plan for cultural assimilation and destruction of culture, not people per se (OOC: my maternal grandfather found himself on the wrong end of such policies and couple of his brothers died fighting Italians later; the fact that he was also a communist didn't help). But if you remove actual plans for treatment of locals then Gemran and Italian action are not that different. Of course there is the question of who would be victims, which makes one "Bad and uncultured but not fundamentally wrong" and other "Holy pantscrapping fuck, that's so bad we need to, like, hang some people for it!"

I think that you overestimate the importance of the white identity of the victims, although I think I can agree that the difference between Hitler and Mussolini is one of degree, not of kind, as both were pretty busy in the "landgrab with wanton mass murder" business. As a personal note, I feel ashamed as an Italian for the hardship your relatives had to endure.
I hope that I made sufficiently clear that while I think that there is a perceptible difference between Fascism and Nazism in this respect, nothing in what I wrote should be construed as a defence of Italian Fascism.
However, all this is derailing the thread. On topic, the Mongols were widely perceived as an apocalyptic catastrophe in Medieval Muslim sources. There is sometimes a resigned feeling that they were ultimately a force unleashed by God against which resistance was futile, but this did not make, in most cases, their view any more positive. It can be safely said that they proved to be in many respects an exceptionally destructive force. Their ruthlessness was far beyond the standards of the time (which provide a pretty low bar). On the other hand, they were, for the standards of the time, exceptionally tolerant of foreign religions and cultures... whatever survived their onslaught, that is.
 
The people under threat by the Mongols, if granted foreknowledge of the Nazis, would've been hard-pressed to see a meaningful difference.

There is a difference though. The Mongols usually gave the choice between submission and death. For many groups, the Nazis only envisioned death.
 
There is a difference though. The Mongols usually gave the choice between submission and death. For many groups, the Nazis only envisioned death.

Very true.

On the other hand, when the Nazi invasions of France, Belgium, Norway, etc, were resisted, they didn't kill 50-80% of the population, as they did in Volga Bulgaria.

When the Dutch garrison resisted in Rotterdam, the Nazis bombed it, killing roughly a thousand persons. This was a horrible atrocity. But the Nazis didn't then line up the entire population of the city after surrender and shoot them.

I have absolutely no intention of defending the Nazi regime. It was a hideous monstrosity and desperately needed to be eliminated from the face of the earth. But if we're comparing, we must compare honestly.

There were ways in which the Mongols were even more murderously cruel than even the Nazis were, even as there were ways in which they were less.
 
I'm not sure comparing the Mongol Empire vs the Nazis is going to be particularly productive
Well, then let's do something unexpected:

they say when Dresden in Germany was being razed to the ground, was being burned down by the allied bombers together with all the little boys, little girls, old women and all the innocent civilian men... they say you could clearly see a happy face of Chengizz Khan smiling from the night sky.
That was a proper true Mongol-style killing: "let's scare the shit out of this country!"

They say that immediately after nuclear atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan you could distinctly hear Chengizz Khan laughing out from Hell.
Such a nice Mongoll-style message: "Surrender or we will burn down all your cities and towns full of innocent civilian people, one by one!"
Kind of "bow or die" message.

How did you like my 'the Mongol Empire vs the Allies' comparison? :)
 

Gaius Julius Magnus

Gone Fishin'
If anything, that's worse than Wehrabooism. There really isn't anyone around here who'll stand up for Nazi atrocities in the same way.
I tend to agree, though I don't like to get into the Mongols vs. the Nazis debate, or pretty much any historical group vs. the Nazis debate.

One could argue that the Mongols got the short end of the stick by historians for a long time but that doesn't mean we should go in the completely opposite direction and suddenly excuse the terrible stuff they did because of whatever positive results came about--that they may or may not have even intended--, especially by saying "it wasn't x million that died...it was only this amount of x million who died".
 
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