World War II: The Holocaust
- Thread starter Locutus
- Start date
No one stated that - so your gathering work is in need of work. As was mentioned sometimes you have to fight.
As to Petros remark on Stalin - It was the mass starvation in Ukraine -
I think the point is Hitler was a monster but Stalin was as bad, if not worse: we like to think we were "the good guys" as far as the World Wars went but we made some ugly choices in both. The Treaty of Versailles really penalized the Central Powers (namely Germany as the only real survivor) for making and support alliances, like everyone else did, while in WW2, we made a choice that was similar in nature (but obviously not scale!) to setting a Clifford Olsen free in order to stop a Robert Picton. Stalin didn't share the same racial/religious preoccupation as Hitler, but there were also signs that Hitler's rule wasn't as ironclad, either. There were plots to assassinate Hitler and attempts (or at least at willingness within the German underground groups) try to make peace with the Western powers. There isn't any evidence of any such plots in Soviet history, just of repeated officer purges in the army and killing off anyone else who might be a danger at some point, including family Stalin's own members.
In terms of the OP, all I can say is that I have known for years the Holocaust was real and horrific. I have a personal angle that was passed from my grandfather who was in the Belgian SAS battalion and was there at one of the camp liberations (we were never sure which one, Mom thought it was Belsen-Bergen but that was reported liberated by the US so...). Its something he wouldn't talk about except for once when he and my great uncle (who served with him) were in the vodka. It affected him for the rest of his days.
I know that Stalin was bad. We spent the following decades up to 1991 locked horns with the Soviets, but this is just a red herring people throw into the arena to distract from the horrors of the holocaust.
Israel exists today in great part because of the the final solution and that is something some people would rather avoid by devaluing the holocaust.
Due to the fact that my wife's family are all Ukranian and some were slaughtered there I'd say "No!"
Any other stupid trolling f ucking questions numbskull?
Debates don't necessarily follow a straight narrow path, there can be lots of intangibles like playing devil's advocate and yes hyperbole or understatement to add a little humour, we should look at it as being more like a playground than a courtroom! :lol:
Yes, Israel exists today, in large part as a salve to the guilt of Western Allies and in part because of the anti-semitism that still existed after the war but that was an afterthought. During the war, Israel wasn't on the radar. I just wonder sometimes if the West didn't trade X million European Jews for 2X, 3X or 10X other Eastern Europeans by choosing the Soviets over the Nazis. Would the Holocaust have happened to the degree it did, if von Stauffenberg's group or one of the others had had more support from the OSI? The plot featured in Tom Cruise's movie didn't culiminate until July 1944 but there were earlier ones, and the Final Solution wasn't fully implemented until July 1942 (its believed 1 million Jews had died at that point but thats still better than 6).
In the end, we can't change what happened or who died but I always wonder was there a better choice available? Will there be a better choice next time? Its sad but I believe, as a species, we don't learn lessons like this, we forget and repeat them on a larger scale.
There is no doubt that Holocaust education is certainly the most pressing human endeavour today, even more important than global warming.
Can you compare the two?
I don't think the full realization of all the ramifications let alone locations of the camp happened until very near the end of the war. I read a damn good book about Aushwitz and Birkenau back in the 60s, don't recall the name of it, but it sure showed where the "bear **** in the buckwheat".