He's suggesting that being meticulous takes it to a higher level of evil than simply race driven rampaging.
Japan was pretty meticulous itself and is guilty of many of the same things that Nazi Germany is guilty of (including human experimentation and chemical warfare).
There is also the belief that Nazi Germany was not a meticulously planned operation, that it was haphazard and the mixture of evil and high external pressure is what created the final solution a short time before it was carried out. Hillberg, Browning, and Wiesel all wrote pretty authoritative books on it.
Not that any of this is really on topic. My point is that while certain acts do have a reputation, it's hard to accurately separate and quantify acts of evil and human suffering throughout history.
Colonialism had its horrors. And - yes - Britain, France and the US have committed their share of atrocities.
However, the genocide committed by the Germans in WW2 has no equivalent: the systematic utilization of a modern industrialized state apparatus as a machine for the efficient slaughter of people has no equivalents.
There have been other genocides. Nothing as systematic, planned, and evil as what the Holocaust represents, however. Thankfully.
I think that is what peter was saying.
The British basically treated most of the world with disdain for centuries. From the African slave trade, to forced famines in India and Ireland, to gulags and concentration camps in Kenya and South Africa. It was systematic. If you count the spin-offs, such as residential schools in Canada and the erasing of indigenous cultures in their colonies as genocide, much of it is still quite visible today.
In the 1940s alone, the British orchestrated a famine in India that killed at least 4 million Bengalis and some suggest even up to 20 million Indians of different ethnic backgrounds. Churchill himself openly considered Bengalis and Indians to be an inferior race and had no issues taking their food to feed British soldiers. If you include the sectarian violence and the entire colonial period (especially in Africa and South Asia), the numbers are estimated to be between 1 and 2 billion.
Germany did a lot of damage in a short period of time in a more concentrated area, but nothing about Britain's colonial and genocidal past should be sanitized.
Japan was pretty meticulous itself and is guilty of many of the same things that Nazi Germany is guilty of (including human experimentation and chemical warfare).
There is also the belief that Nazi Germany was not a meticulously planned operation, that it was haphazard and the mixture of evil and high external pressure is what created the final solution a short time before it was carried out. Hillberg, Browning, and Wiesel all wrote pretty authoritative books on it.
Not that any of this is really on topic. My point is that while certain acts do have a reputation, it's hard to accurately separate and quantify acts of evil and human suffering throughout history.
Japan was pretty meticulous itself and is guilty of many of the same things that Nazi Germany is guilty of (including human experimentation and chemical warfare).
There is also the belief that Nazi Germany was not a meticulously planned operation, that it was haphazard and the mixture of evil and high external pressure is what created the final solution a short time before it was carried out. Hillberg, Browning, and Wiesel all wrote pretty authoritative books on it.
Not that any of this is really on topic. My point is that while certain acts do have a reputation, it's hard to accurately separate and quantify acts of evil and human suffering throughout history.
I would argue that the final solution was very meticulously planned and mapped out to the point that it was almost like a UPs delivery system of death, right down to the way that they decided who went where and the most efficient way to kill people without causing mental harm to the executors.
Everything was mapped out to the minute, the gold tooth, and built around efficiency.
There are several books that talked about the meeting where Heydrich and Eichmann coordinated with several agencies to implement the final solution.
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I would argue that the final solution was very meticulously planned and mapped out to the point that it was almost like a UPs delivery system of death, right down to the way that they decided who went where and the most efficient way to kill people without causing mental harm to the executors.
Everything was mapped out to the minute, the gold tooth, and built around efficiency.
There are several books that talked about the meeting where Heydrich and Eichmann coordinated with several agencies to implement the final solution.
But dude, there was some books. We need to ignore the massive logistical infrastructure and prisoner accounting that was undertaken now.
Japan was pretty meticulous itself and is guilty of many of the same things that Nazi Germany is guilty of (including human experimentation and chemical warfare).
There is also the belief that Nazi Germany was not a meticulously planned operation, that it was haphazard and the mixture of evil and high external pressure is what created the final solution a short time before it was carried out. Hillberg, Browning, and Wiesel all wrote pretty authoritative books on it.
Not that any of this is really on topic. My point is that while certain acts do have a reputation, it's hard to accurately separate and quantify acts of evil and human suffering throughout history.
Really? Because I doubt you're going to be able to convincingly defend that preposterous position.
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I would argue that the final solution was very meticulously planned and mapped out to the point that it was almost like a UPs delivery system of death, right down to the way that they decided who went where and the most efficient way to kill people without causing mental harm to the executors.
Everything was mapped out to the minute, the gold tooth, and built around efficiency.
There are several books that talked about the meeting where Heydrich and Eichmann coordinated with several agencies to implement the final solution.
Right, but there is the thought that it was always their intent which doesn't appear to be true. The whole thing had been going on for nearly a decade by the time that meeting happened (and millions had been killed prior to the meeting). After the meeting it took only months before mass extermination camps got going.
It was planned, but wasn't a years-long process that was steadily going right to plan. This was a meeting after a year of mass killings that was essentially about organizing what was already happening with or without proper direction.
I don't see that as exceptionally more meticulous than Japan or anyone else guilty of mass human destruction. The reputation of Nazi Germany being a well oiled machine of evil is wrong, it was a mess.
I think many people overlook the horrors the Soviets committed against the Ukrainians that has become known as the Holodomor. I'm not trying to equate atrocities or argue who was more efficient at committing mass murder, but the Holodomor is right there with the Holocaust.
I think the Germans finally got all the racism and superiority complex out of their system. I think they would make wonderful world leaders. It's no secret Merkel was a young communist, but she has been one heck of a stateswoman now for many years. The world could use more German influence in my opinion.
Always their intent and meticulously planned are not the same thing.
A whole other scale than the Japanese as well. Setting up some prison camps and doing human experimentation while also letting your soldiers cut the head off prisoners and pitchfork civilians isn't really the same as ...
Setting up ghettos for storage,
Configuring trains for human transport
Keeping accounting of all your victims
Working with local groups in invaded countries sympathetic to your cause to round up local Jews.
Keeping hair for use
Keeping gold teeth
Experimenting with different execution models to find the one with the highest throughput.
If you're putting it on the level as any other genocide in terms of planning, you're just being obtuse.
Have you read anything by the authors I mentioned?
I'm not the one inventing the claim, read Browning's Origin of the Final Solution and Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews.
Why would I bother? We have massive evidence of the implementation of the Final Solution. There's a book that suggest maybe it wasn't so planned? Ok. Cool. So what? I think I'd rather just stick with what we have laid out for us.
The point at which it was decided is really irrelevant. Once it was decided, it was meticulously carried out.
Why would I bother? We have massive evidence of the implementation of the Final Solution.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
I guess we'll just have to check the meticulous records and near-flawless bookkeeping.
I think I see PepsiFree....
Yeah, best to ignore the book by the guy who found many of those meticulous records and near-flawless bookkeeping himself! Why read the book by the guy whose job it was in WW2 to find those documents.
Quote:
Hilberg served first in the 45th Infantry Division (United States) during World War II, but, given his native fluency and academic interests, he was soon attached to the War Documentation Department, charged with examining archives throughout Europe. It was his discovery of part of Hitler's crated private library in Munich, which he stumbled across while quartered in the Braunes Haus, that prompted his research into the Holocaust
(Wiki)
Quote:
Hilberg's groundbreaking book, which drew on mountains of documents from the Nuremberg trials, demonstrated the systematic nature of the Nazi slaughter ... He also assisted in the hunt for German documents that could be used in the prosecution of war crimes. While stationed in Munich at the former Nazi party headquarters, Hilberg discovered crates containing Hitler's private library. He later worked for a project to organize and microfilm captured German documents. That archive became the foundation for Holocaust research, including his own landmark study.
Hilberg's groundbreaking book, which drew on mountains of documents from the Nuremberg trials, demonstrated the systematic nature of the Nazi slaughter
I mean I think that says it right there no?
Do you even know what you're arguing anymore or are you just arguing because you need to argue everything?
Yeah, best to ignore the book by the guy who found many of those meticulous records and near-flawless bookkeeping himself! Why read the book by the guy whose job it was in WW2 to find those documents.
"Why read Hilberg?" is about the dumbest thing someone could say if they wanted to even start pretending to know anything about the Holocaust.
Yes, it seems like they really threw that all together at the last minute. Pretty impressive logistics.
I'm not likely going to read his life's work because I have a finite amount of time, but at the same time I dont think his research really supports your argument.
Lay it out for me, what is your assertion? That the Nazis didnt really plan the Holocaust out? It just sort of came together? Despite 'mountains' of documents evidently to the contrary?
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If anything the initial meeting showed how well organized the Nazi's were because the whole thing was about the efficiency of killing
1) we're killing Jews but not fast enough and they're to an extent resisting or making it hard
2) We're using an awful lot of bullets
3) we're not killing them fast enough
4) We're having a moral problem due to all the shooting
5) How can we profit on this.
6) coordinating between the SS, the Gestapo, and the various groups that are killing jews off is difficult and inefficient
These were all questions that were being asked before the final solution meeting.
So call it in the most gruesome way the starting of a small business called Death Inc. They were killing in great numbers but they needed to more organized so they could go from killing in great numbers to killing in mass numbers
So they basically had a board meeting to discuss
1) Logistics, how do we get the Jews to centralized locations in the most effective way possible using the effectiveness of a train schedule
2) How can we profit, sure there's hair and possessions and fillings, but there's also slave labor that we can work to death. So we need a system to insta kill the weak and young and woman, and keep the generally healthy ones to work to death. Oh and we need to keep twins and some others to further Nazi mystical science.
3) How can we kill faster and cheaper, while not driving our executioners mad, and at the same time be able to account for the killings, why we'll use gas at all of the camps, but lets experiment with different ones that kill the quickest. Oh and we can create an accounting system so that we know precisely how fast we're killing and increase that rate.
4) How do we coordinate the SS, Gestapo, and foreign killing squads so that we're all following a common systems and getting the Jews to the camp.
they were organized at the start, then they got efficient as they started acting like the final Solution was some kind of massive factory floor.
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Highest ranked death toll that can be pinned on the British is the Indian Rebellion at 18.
A little education is a dangerous thing. Most young Westerners go through that stage where they unmask the jingoism of their history to find the real truth - an unmasking that inevitably reveals their own culture to be monstrously compromised. But few take the next step, and learn enough history to put those crimes into the context of a human experience that is almost universally brutal and predatory.
"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." - Gibbon
There's something frankly narcissistic about the fixation of so many Westerners on Western crimes - as though the vast catalogue of horrors around the world that didn't involve Westerners aren't worth thinking about.
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Last edited by CliffFletcher; 06-01-2017 at 03:04 PM.
