Genocide is still with us.

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Hmmm, I think this is more on topic, since it is only in the semantics of Genocide, Stalins acts were still mass murder. But I would argue against both statements. Why do you think Stalin acted Rationaly, and even more perplexingly, un ideologically. Prime examples being, the 1936 Purge of the Red Army in which 35,000 were shot, (off the top of my head) and 11 of the 12 Commisars for war were purged, perhaps the second largest factor in the reason why the soviets were almost crushed by Germany in 1941 (irational fear of a military coup) and before his policy of enforced collectivisation, his call for the elimination of the Kulak (A wealthy peasent, although wealthy is an abstract term when discussing 1920\30's soviet russia, in this context a wealthy peasent would be one who owned a single cow) as a class, resulting in the mass deportation and execution of perhaps Russia's best chance of solving its agrairian crisis on ideological grounds, indeed the contrinued failure of agriculture, right up until Breznev can be atributed to the ideological failings of forced socialsim.

 

Because it is highly questionable if the Soviet Union would have held together in war without Stalin's purges. Unlike in Germany where everyone worshipped Hitler in the Soviet Union the atmosphere before the war was a bit different. After the war Stalin was more or less the absolute god but before it there was still opposition against his power. To say he acted completely unideologically is of course wrong and I did not claim that, I just said his judgement was not blinded by it.

Anyway the main point is that Stalin's purges were to him necessary to ensure everyone's loyality to him. Hitler had really no need of this, and he eliminated people who did not even have a possibility to affect the society in any way anymore. Stalin's purges were caused by egoism while the holocaust was ideological.

 

I believe you are wrong about the Purges, however the point you make is not invalid, but how would you explain. Collectivisation, de-kulakisation, rapid industrialisation, the purge of the armed forces, anti-church campaign, Socialim in one country, Comintern, Zhdanist Realism. While I am not saying Stalin was a fanatical Leninist Marxist (although I believe he was certainly influenced by both Lenin and Marx) he was enthralled by power, and his power base was made from Leninist-Marxists. Thus Stalin nearly always acted for ideological reasons, aside from when it came to power struggles and democratic centralism.

Indeed there is even an argument that the Ezhovschina (Yez-of-chee-na) was based on ideological grounds, either that there actualy was a bougious enemy to be purged or that he was following Leninism in which the use of terror by the Cheka and the pruging of the party, Chistka, were used in times of instability. One could even go as far as to say that the Purges were not acted out as Stalin had envisaged, however the so called doctours plot which ended with his death in 1953 usually puts paid to that theory

 

Morgoth,
when saying for 'cold rationalitity', I meant 'efficiency' - efficient also is "rationell" in German, what should explain my mistake.

Mr, Writer,
as for the Catholic Church, it was mainly due to cardinal von Galen's preaching that the nazis stopped killing handicapped people. For that he courted death.

He's going to be beatified for his courageous opposition against Nazi mass murder.

[ May 01, 2005, 23:00: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

While it is true that they stopped because of Caridanal? (I have it as Bishop in my readings but its a minor point) Von Galen. By that time 70,000 had been killed, while Child euthenasia continued up until 1945.

However that brings about two points. The first, why did they stop. 70,000 would be a significant perportion of the handicapped population, and the timeing ment that the T4 agents finished their work on the Euthenasia program just as the Holocaust program began to (in most modern historians opinon, timeing is an issue destined to never be solved) take off and were transfered where there experience was vital.

Secondly, since a) that church was prooven to have power to stop such acts and b) it was obvious exactly what the reprisals were. Why again did Pope Pius fail in his moral duty as leader of the Roman Cathloic Church.

 

From what I have heard it was the negative response of both the German people and the protest of German churchmen that led the Nazis to bring to a halt their euthanasia programms. And it was the intervention of the Germans which stopped repression of the "Mischlinge" (people of mixed heritage).

So the support of the majority of Germans for killing the Jewish was doubtful, as Ragusa said.

 

One can hardly be a leader of a communist nation without being ideological. Stalin was very ideological yes but he was also a lot more practical in his thinking than Hitler. In his later years he became incerasingly paranoid and his thinking became less rational but during the years before the war and during it his thinking was very rational. Every political acts more or less on ideological basis, perhaps even more then.

I would not call him to be blinded by his ideology however in the same manner that Hitler was. I would go even as far as to say that Stalin's practical thinking won him the war. If he would have acted like Hitler (which he truth be told did at the beginning but once he saw the disasterous effects he let others do the strategy) and involved himself in every strategic decision the Soviet would have lost. He also made compromises like let the soldiers carry the cross during the war, something completely against his ideology. Do you think Hitler would have freed jews from the death camps if they had fought for Germany when the situation was getting desperate? I thought not...

 

A more apropriet analargy would be, would Stalin let the Bourgoius (and my spelling, its awful) fight in the red army. You get the same answer No. However, Stalin did let them march over Nazi minefields to clear them.

 

The problem is that there were near to none of them left in the Soviet Union when the war started. I really do doubt that he would not have used them if necessary for the saefty of Soviet Union. In any case this discussion is getting a lot offtopic right now.

 

Dendri,
I guess Mr Writer has just a problem with the Catholic Church he probably views as carrying responsibility for the holocaust. Yes, the Catholic Church indeed helped Nazis to go to South America and the like.
But the Catholic Church had a significant problem under Hitler - they faced unveiled threats against their priests, many of whom went to concentration camps, practically they were held hostage. Their choice would have been to call upon the priests to protest - and to see them being deported and their flock left alone. That makes understandable the silence of the Vatican. One has to consider von Galen's actions in face of this.

How unsatisfactory that however is, it is fairly easy to come up today, undeterred by lack of insight or knowledge, and claim the moral high ground by denouncing the church for their actions then today. They weren't alone making compromises.

The Allieds were perfectly well informed about the concentration camps and the mass murder there through their decyphering of german communications traffic. They said nothing, did not protest, did nothing, neither personally nor through intermediaries - probably to protect their source that gave them such an advantage over Germany.
A moral act? I don't think so. Holocaust originally means making a sacrifice to the fire - virtually the allieds sacrificed the innates of the concentration camps on the altar of their final victory. They were a secondary concern. An easy choice? Certainly not ... hopefully not.

[ May 02, 2005, 15:33: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Which ties back to my post, no one really had any problem with the Nazis killing off every jew, gypsy or homosexual they got their hands on. Heck, large parts of the allies and neutrals population applauded that and thought it was about tmie someone did something about that vermin. If the Germans hadnt invaded Poland and then France and clearly shown that they had serious expansionistic plans no one would have done or cared anything about people being put in concentration camps in Germany.

It was first after the war when partially the full scope of the madness was realised but mostly when people got some time to think and seeing as everyone was boneweary of blood and slaughter they saw the horror and lunacy for what it was. A large part is also due to the fact that Germany lost and everything the loser in a war committed under a war gets lots and lots of attention to further justify the winners. If Germany had won I am convinced that´there wouldnt be a jew or gypsy left in Europe and French, Brits, Swedes and everyone had to a large majority been happy in killing them off or turning a blind eye to it.

 

It is easy for us to pass judgements on things that happened in the past. If we truly learned from History then prehaps we could and would change things. This is why I am not happy with the treatment of the Nazi Genocide policies as a "unique" happening. There may have unique things about it but it was still genocide. It had happened before and it is still happening.

It will continue to happen as long as people continue to ignore it. It is only as a united voice that we can put a stop to it. This history has proven.

 

Joa hit a good point in his post. The theme of eugenics wasn't restricted to Germany alone, there were eugenics programs all over the western world, from the US, UK or Sweden. Sweden continued a policy of enforced separation or sterilisation for those of mixed race, low intelligence or with physical defects in order to prevent such qualities from being passed on right up until 1975. Japan had an eugenics program well into the 1990s.

It was considered modern 'science' - until people only over the horrors of the consequent nazi conduct of eugenics saw into what horrors that lead. And even after that, it went on, more subtle, less obvious.

That is to say: Eugenice through forced sterilisation, euthanasia - that wasn't uniquely German.

All the sophistication and science or pseudo-science the west put into their 'ethic cleansing' via eugenics is iirc pointless in Rwanda, thanks to the tribal scars everyone has written Tutsi or Hutu right in his face. In Cambodia it was criteria for the killing fields when you could write or speak english. That was not wanted in Pol Pot's peasant paradise.

What a hubris, what an insanity.

 

Although there are no reliable figures from during stalins time, the fact that 4.5 million of the 5.2 million people contained in the goulag were released upon Khrushchev's assention suggests that there were quite a few.

@Ragusa - I have nothing against the Cathloic Church, indeed I applaud the actions of the few in the face of the many, especially those from the church, who not only went against those who ruled the state, but the silence of the vatican in what they thought was right. Truely an honerable and brave thing today.

You'll also notice that either in this thread or the other thread on the Holocaust I attacked the allies for their lack of action against the holocaust, especially my own nation, Great Britain. However, even as I have said myself, although critisism in hindsight is easy. I believe that Pope Pius failed in his moral duty as leader of the largest christian church.

@Joacqin, the reason that no one objected to the Nazi's killing any Jews before 1940 is because they were not killing them. Indeed as late as June 1941 forced emigration to Madagascar was still their main priority. It was only with the realisation that Britain would not fall, and thus would retain control of the sea and the 'aquisition' of a further 3 million East European jews that Genocide was considered.

@Nakia and Ragusa's second post. I agree whole heartedly. But by the same point, one cannot hope to learn from history is one doesnt recognise and understand what makes the holocaust (I am aware that 'holocaust' was popularised in its use by Jewish historians attaching a diffrent name to the genocide of the 1940's in order to mark the scale of its barbarity and its significance to them) diffrent from the majority of other acts of Genocide.

However, the one thing all acts of Genocide have in common is indeed, insantiy.

 

This statement seems incompatible with the statements others made about the German population not knowing about the mass killings of the Holocaust; if large parts of the allied and neutral populations knew of and approved of the extermination of the jews, gays, et al...how could the Germans not?

This illustrates Nakia's point quite nicely. Is it even remotely plausible that the majority of people directly involved in any given genocide--be it the Holocaust, the European/American annihilation of the native populations of the Americas, the Turkish butchery of the Armenians, the slaughter in Rwanda, or the killing fields of Cambodia--are insane? That's very, very unlikely.

"Normal" people are, by and large, responsible for every atrocity in human history. There may be a Pol Pot or Hitler acting as catalyst, but the men carrying out the slaughter? They're normal. People like you. People like me.

I'm reminded of a letter from an SS officer at...Auschwitz, I think it was...to his wife, in which he speaks of what he's doing and why. Strike the references to genocide from his letter, and he'd seem both the ideal husband and the ideal patriot.

 

My point was that everyone, Germans and allies alike knew that jews and others were not served milk and cookies and was tucked in tight by the loving nazis every night.

In my view there honestly isnt much difference between closing the shop of someone because of his ethnicity, forcing him to wear a sign of what he is and putting him in a gaschamber and harvest his gold fillings. Everyone knew people were badly mistreated, they may not have full knowledge of the industrial extermination that was put into motion when the war started to go bad for the Germans but they knew that it was no fun to be different in German territories.

 

Thats my point, I didnt mean to infer that the individuals were insane. The fact that normal people can do such things is insane. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice of words, but I was taking cue from previous posts.

@Joacqin - Whoah, are you sure you mean that? While it is true that Nazi dislike of Jews was well known, the vast majority of Europe was at that time AS (Anti-semitic), indeed the lapses and pauses in Nazi AS policy ment that hundreds of Jews returned or decided against leaving thinking that this was as bad as it was going to get.

There isn't much diffrence between rascism and the holocaust. I ask again are you sure you don't wish to rethink your point. Remember what time this was, the 1930's. I wouldn't like to be a black person in America then, nor a Jew in france, or a rich person in russia, sorta like I wouldn't like to be an iranian born Arab in America right now. Are you saying someone should have interveaned to ensure global egalitarianism?

 

Normal people can do insane things when everyone around them is doing it, too. It's the principle of adaption to the group. If everyone reaffirms you that what you do is a-ok, you will believe it yourself in the end, and you want to believe it: Another transport to Auschwitz, business as usual. That's the banality of evil.

That is, a small leadership group, if ruthless enough can pull people to do such things, if necessary alone by the threat of what will happen in case of disobendience. The abnoral people actually enjoying it, the sadists, are an exception I guess.

And things like europe's witchhunts, lynchings in the US, progroms in east europe or in asia or the frenzied slaughter in Rwanda and other african countries show that man as part of a mob is perfectly capable to commit insane acts of extreme violence only for motives like rage, anger or fear.