The Cardassian Occupation of Bajor was rather mild

[Imperator-zor]

First of all, I'm not going into this with the intent of trivializing any real world peoples which have been the victims of Racism, Colonialism, Systematic Oppression and so forth. This is about fictional characters in a fictional world in which real world monsters are used as a meter stick.

I am aware of the real life parallels that are invoked in the regards to the Cardassians and the Bajorans, most specifically the analog of Jews and Nazis. However from what I can gather they fail to live up to the severity that these analogs.

First and foremost is the Holocaust analog. This does not fit because the Holocaust was a plan which had systematic eradication as an end goal. Every single last Jew: man, woman, child, elder and infant was seen by the Nazis as an irredeemable dyed in the wool enemy of the Ayran Race and needed to die. They were either to be killed or exploited until they could not work and then killed and they were rather successful doing this. The Polish Jewish population went from 3 million to 200,000. The main thrust of the Holocaust happened between 1942 and 1944 when the Death Camps were in full swing. In contrast Cardassia's occupation of Bajor lasted about 50 Years and there was still a decent sized Bajoran population on Bajor itself.

Of course, there is a wide spectrum between a decent state of affairs and being the targets of an extermination campaign. As such we could consider the Death Tole of the Bajoran population. This is listed as 15 Million. Spread out over 50 years, this adds up to 300,000 people. Now that is a lot of people dead, make no mistake, but one must consider other factors. Bajor is listed as having a population of 3.8 Billion. Given that the Bajoran civilization is supposed to be tens of thousands of years old, we can assume that this is fairly stable. This means that every year you had a one in 12,666.6666667 chance of dying from the Cardassian Occupation on Bajor. In contrast every year you have a 681.25 change of dying from smoking in the United States.

Compare this to the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War which killed 27 Million Soviets in WWII, among them about 20 million civilians killed by the nazis through direct military action, executions, killing factories, starvation, zero concern for collateral damage and similar between 1941-45 (this includes Soviet Jews) which had a population of 188 million pre war. Or the Japanese who did not have mass-eradication like the Holocaust or Generalplan Ost on their mind but killed 15-20 million people in China between 1937-45 which had a population about 500,000,000.

I'm sure being beaten by an Obsidian Order agent in a locked room was horrible. But as it stands Cardassian Occupation seems like the nicer variety of 19th colonialism.

Zor

[Yukaphile]

The creators obviously meant to draw a Nazi parallel, but left it open-minded so the viewer could approach it on their own terms. The slave labor, the gulags, and the mass rapes makes me think more of the Soviets, tbh, because that was more their shtick, while what happened with the Germans was abuse of government and the institutional power structures that made up their society.

[clearspira]

This is basically Dukat's whole argument as to why he was actually a nice bloke. DS9 did grey areas eather well.

I think the fact Bajor was meant to have been a peaceful world rich in culture and art and progress before the occupation and is now a famine stricken rock with massive internal strife is the real tragedy.

Cultural death rather than death, death.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I can see a few factors in this-

Technology, medicine, and food supplies would make a huge difference. With Germany's invasion of Russia, a huge number of deaths were the result of cold, starvation, and disease. People with injuries that were severe enough were often just ignored. With Trek's magic wand technology, a lot of these deaths could be avoided.

As evil as the Cardassians might have been, their occupation was about expanding their own empire and gathering resources. They had no reason to hate a particular ethnic or religious group within the Bajoran population- they just wanted Bajor.

The nature of resistance also matters. Russians were fanatically nationalistic. Some of it was patriotic pride of their country, heritage, etc. A large part of it was also long-standing Soviet propaganda and fear of Stalin's iron fist. Far lesser crimes than desertion put you at risk of imprisonment or execution. Men, women, and children all fought ferociously by the proverbial tooth and nail. I don't want to downplay the heroism of resistance in France or Poland, but the fact remains that invading a country like Russia (or the U.S., for that matter) is a completely different animal for a host of reasons and turned out to be a disastrous mistake for Germany.

The occupation of Bajor looks more like the occupation of France. The Maquis are named after the WW2 French guerilla fighters, after all. While fighters like Kira were certainly ferocious, resistance apparently came in comparably smaller pockets. The result of that is less death.

[LittleRaven]

Of course, there is a wide spectrum between a decent state of affairs and being the targets of an extermination campaign. As such we could consider the Death Tole of the Bajoran population. This is listed as 15 Million. Spread out over 50 years, this adds up to 300,000 people. Now that is a lot of people dead, make no mistake, but one must consider other factors. Bajor is listed as having a population of 3.8 Billion. Given that the Bajoran civilization is supposed to be tens of thousands of years old, we can assume that this is fairly stable. This means that every year you had a one in 12,666.6666667 chance of dying from the Cardassian Occupation on Bajor. In contrast every year you have a 681.25 change of dying from smoking in the United States.

I'm chalking this up as a solid case of Scifi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. Clearly, someone thought "Well, the Holocaust was really bad, and that only killed 6 million, so 15 million must be REALLY REALLY bad." without actually factoring things like timelines and affected population sizes.

Because 15 million people over 50 years is a ROUNDING ERROR on a planetary scale, and that's clearly not how anyone involved, even Dukat, saw the Occupation.

[Madner Kami]

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I mean, the distance they fire above the planet's surface in Code of Honor is pretty symptomatic of that issue.

[Rocketboy1313]

Yeah, the Holocaust is not a perfect analogy.

The Hunger Plan, Atlantic Slave Trade, or colonialism in general are a bit closer. As the cultural annihilation, theft of relics, theft of natural resources, widespread rape and murder, the slavery, the poisoning and sabotage of the land and facilities upon exit... All of that fits in more with the various flavors of destruction.

While the Holocaust is the big one... Let's not pretend there haven't been a plethora of possible inspirations for this from history.

Can we not pay too much attention to the logistical figures of Star Trek? As "hard" a science fiction as people claim it to be, they do not do math well.

[PerrySimm]

Gul Dukat would be quite happy to hear that historical nuance is back in style. "It could have been worse" is what he was saying all along!

Then again, based on the array of characters on display in the Cardassian Union, maybe Bajor really did luck out when Central Command assigned a politically savvy, self-important narcissist to the job, as opposed to another leader who could have been much more cruel.

[Madner Kami]

It's not about historical nuance, when the amount of people killed doesn't even register on the larger scale. The US has what? Roughly 320 million citizens? Well, 1.25 million of these die each year as a result of an accident with a car. That's a whooping ~0.4% of your population per year and these people dying has what impact on US society again? Tragic as each of these deaths might be, but how does their death impact the US culture at large? Conversely, here you have a population of almost 4 billion. They lost roughly 300,000 per year. That's 0.03% of their population. The impact of their deaths should be even less significant on the larger scale and if the death of 0.4% is already entirely irrelevant, then how could 0.03% have any sort of consequence? The US is probably loosing more homeless people in a harsh winter than that and you do not even read news-articles about that...