TOS: Patterns of Force

[Yukaphile]

I'm curious, do you consider me a Nazi apologist? I make no excuses for the barbarism of the party, but I disconnect that from the average population of civilians who many people seem all too willing to victim-shame (given that in a police state rife with abuse of power, it could be you who disappears and is tortured or killed at any time, so to just go along with the flow is what most people would do), and as I've said, that's because I see a fine line between being German and being a Nazi, even if the state forces said party membership on you.

[CharlesPhipps]

I don't but you seem to be falling into the trap of Both Sideism which can be seductive but deeply problematic as it's primarily used by apologists and deniers. I'm a pacifist in real life and hate that criminal activities done by the Allies get glossed over or ignored but it's also important to not lose perspective either.

Well, people should learn to separate the Germans from the Nazis, as hard as that can sometimes be. Now we got American Nazis and I've heard of 'em in Peru. Obviously, it's not something they have a monopoly on anymore.

Yukaphile, take this as a piece of advice but you need to acquaint yourselves with a bunch of people who have very different takes on WW2 than the ones you've been hanging around. Weirdly, I'd advise you to watch the German language movie THE NASTY GIRL. It's a nice little dramatization of the true life story of a young girl who wants to dig into her town's history and finds out how heavily they have been lying, covering up, equivocating, and destroying evidence to make it seem like they weren't suppprters of the Nazi cause or its worst excesses.

There's been a huge movement in history called the "Clean Wehrmacht" which is designed to blame all of the Nazi atrocities on the SS and a small group of bad apples.

No.

It was policy as a whole and people knew in the public just what horribly evil shit was being done. The Nazis were also worse than the Soviet Union and Stalin (and they were monstrously evil people). It was terrible bunch of people and even with the atrocities done by the Allies (atomic bombs, the rapine), we have shit like 20 million Soviets murdered for no other reason than being Slavs.

It's important whenever studying WW2 history in all its fascinating to begin and end with, 'Fuck the Nazis.'

[TheLibrarian]

With an opinion you probably all saw coming, I, for one, absolutely abhor the British and French for their crimes against Germany following WWII. Yeah, big surprise, I know, but you cannot label a single nation as responsible for a conflict that, from all accounts, they all wanted to fight - that they had all been preparing for for years. And it got to be bad enough following WWII that they refused to let them postpone some of their war reparation bills and hunger riots broke out. People starving. That's never right, at all, it's just a bunch of assholes being assholes for the sake of being assholes. That's how you got stuff like the Beer Hall Putsch, and the unresolved social conditions that bred a desire to be vindicated on the world stage.

This is a terrible take. If anything, the prevailing view today is that the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles were too lenient on Germany. After the Franco-Prussian War (during which, incidentally, the French citizenry were reduced to eating rats during the Siege of Paris), the German Empire imposed harsh reparations on the French Republic, which had to be paid in 4 years and until they were, German forces would occupy French soil. The French paid it back two years early, and managed to get back on their feet in a relatively short time, without any authoritarian regimes seizing power and setting out on a genocidal conquest of Europe.

After World War I, a war where very little of Germany's infrastructure was attacked but significant portions of French soil were turned into wasted battlefield over 4 years, France (and Britain) demanded reparations in kind. Some of these reparations were directed to feeding the German people, which the Empire had allowed to starve while conducting a futile two-front war. A reparations board was established to determine Germany's ability to pay. Unlike after the Franco-Prussian War, France and Britain did not occupy German soil until the reparations were paid. Germany did not have to pay in cash; the Treaty allowed for commodities as well. Germany decided to pay by literally printing money, devaluing its currency, and causing the crash of its economy and that's what caused the food riots. This is when Germany starts defaulting on their reparations so France occupies the Ruhr to force payment. This partially worked but upset France's allies, who compelled her to withdraw her forces, which she did. Germany's reparations were reduced along with the repayment scheme, and forgiven altogether in 1932 (although Germany did not pay off the debts to finance the reparations until 2010). In the end, Germany only ever paid a fraction of the reparations originally set, installed a genocidal authoritarian genocidal regime that also mismanaged the economy, racked up more debt, and only sustained itself by pillaging the wealth of its (Jewish) citizens and then the wealth of conquered nations. Not until the post-war cash infusion of the Marshall Plan and the drastic reduction in military spending the Allied occupation demanded (and rendered largely unnecessary) did West Germany recover, enter into mutually beneficial agreements with France and the UK (i.e., the proto-EU) and become one of the top economies in the world.

Burn this obsolescent bullshit take on four separate pyres and scatter it to the winds already.

[CharlesPhipps]

Of course, the Nazis as the super-efficient ultimate bad guys plays into U.S. pride in fighting and defeating them. No surprise that the generation that fought WWII would like to make the enemy seem as dangerous and hard-to-defeat as possible. Not to mention that the war was probably more the USSR defeating Germany than the other allies put together, at least on the battlefield.

Speaking as a historian on the subject, it's a bit more complicated than that. The Soviet Union certainly bore the lion's share of the damage in putting down Germany in the same way that Superman did Doomsday.

However, the Soviets really were in a bad spot equipment and industry wise that the sheer amount of equipment and food thrown their way by America can't be understated. The expenditure of forces on the Western front also prevented the Nazis from bringing their full force against the Soviets.

Alt-History where the sacrifices of the British, French, and Americans as well as material support didn't exist is a pretty dark picture. Especially as the Germans were on a campaign of total annihilation (4 times the victims of the Holocaust).

[Yukaphile]

@CharlesPhipps I find it skeptical tens of millions of people could know about mass murder and be okay with that. You may be fine demonizing other human beings that way. I am not. It's equally true WE engaged in just as much propaganda, and to make the enemy seem more devillish was just common back then, especially given that once Nazi crimes came out there was probably a race to spread lies and exaggerate the horror. Not claiming the Holocaust isn't true or something stupid like that, just that people probably went out of their way to try to paint the other side as pure evil out of disgust. How much is true and how much was lost to history? I have no idea. But I think the truth is to neither extreme. It's somewhere in the middle.

No, I'd say the USSR was worse. If that's your stance, then we are never going to see eye to eye.

[Darth Wedgius]

How do you even recreate Nazi Germany without the intense hatred of an Other? It's not like persecution of Jews/Romanis/Communists/gays/etc. was a side-project the Nazi leaders pursued once they got into power. It was kinda their main selling point.

I guess there's the question of how far Gill's national socialism could diverge from historical national socialism and still be considered national socialism, but only a few of the 25 points of the National Socialist German Workers' Party mentioned race, and only one mentioned Jews. The others just divide Germans from non-Germans. For instance, points 9 through 15 are:

9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

From Wikipedia

About what you might expect from an ethno-nationalist system with a strong socialist bent. Authoritarian, certainly, but at that point it didn't call for exterminating anyone or any kind of ethnic cleansing. They were anti-semitic, but "kill all jews we can kill, everywhere" didn't come into play early on.

[CharlesPhipps]

@CharlesPhipps I find it skeptical tens of millions of people could know about mass murder and be okay with that.

Honestly, then you bluntly are engaged in bad history. The Jews were deported to Poland and publicly so with the laws against them as well as the Romani, Homosexuals, State Traitors, and others all being public. People knew about the concentration camps in their area as well. Now, you can argue these people acted from fear rather than support but the simple fact was that Hitler rose to power on campaigns of hate. The Holocaust was not a secret, it was the culmination of a series of small steps that demonized an entire people and led to mass murder.

I suggest you go to the Holocaust museum once in your life and see the public laws and slavery.

The people knew about the disappearances, rounding up dissidents, and murder.

You are defending the people you claim to be against. Because the Nazis were not hiding what they were and the public assented to their rise to power.

Edit:

Here's a dramatization of an event in RL in BAND OF BROTHERS. One of the elements is how furious the Americans are with the German civilians living a mile away from the camp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHcJtU9dr6I

[clearspira]

I don't but you seem to be falling into the trap of Both Sideism which can be seductive but deeply problematic as it's primarily used by apologists and deniers. I'm a pacifist in real life and hate that criminal activities done by the Allies get glossed over or ignored but it's also important to not lose perspective either.

Well, people should learn to separate the Germans from the Nazis, as hard as that can sometimes be. Now we got American Nazis and I've heard of 'em in Peru. Obviously, it's not something they have a monopoly on anymore.

Yukaphile, take this as a piece of advice but you need to acquaint yourselves with a bunch of people who have very different takes on WW2 than the ones you've been hanging around. Weirdly, I'd advise you to watch the German language movie THE NASTY GIRL. It's a nice little dramatization of the true life story of a young girl who wants to dig into her town's history and finds out how heavily they have been lying, covering up, equivocating, and destroying evidence to make it seem like they weren't suppprters of the Nazi cause or its worst excesses.

There's been a huge movement in history called the "Clean Wehrmacht" which is designed to blame all of the Nazi atrocities on the SS and a small group of bad apples.

No.

It was policy as a whole and people knew in the public just what horribly evil shit was being done. The Nazis were also worse than the Soviet Union and Stalin (and they were monstrously evil people). It was terrible bunch of people and even with the atrocities done by the Allies (atomic bombs, the rapine), we have shit like 20 million Soviets murdered for no other reason than being Slavs.

It's important whenever studying WW2 history in all its fascinating to begin and end with, 'Fuck the Nazis.'

This is a sixteen year old German boy named Hans-Georg Henke upon his capture by the Americans during the fall of Berlin; collapsing against a wall whilst crying in fear. This lad was given a gun, a uniform, and told to go off and die whilst murdering as many people as he could. Can you imagine that? Being sixteen and being faced with that? At a time when the rest of us were playing football and thinking about the school prom he was contemplating getting gunned down in a pool of his own blood.

This is the photo I always point people to who have problems believing that Germans were people too.

[CharlesPhipps]

About what you might expect from an ethno-nationalist system with a strong socialist bent. Authoritarian, certainly, but at that point it didn't call for exterminating anyone or any kind of ethnic cleansing. They were anti-semitic, but "kill all jews we can kill, everywhere" didn't come into play early on.

I think there's a very real possibility that the writers meant for John Gill to have not been quite so clean as Captain Kirk hopes he is. After all, John Gill is the dictator of the planet and clearly set himself up as the Furher of the people. His subordinates are also all highly into this genocidal war and racial politics so it's clear he set the groundwork for that.

In short, he may have dialed down the race hatred elements but he had to have done enough that it developed every bit as poorly as in RL.

[Yukaphile]

@CharlesPhipps I've actually spoken with Germans on this topic. They may have suspected something, but suspicions are not evidence. And you can't blame people for not wanting to be next to be raped, tortured, or murdered, possibly in a very grotesque and painful way that goes far past the pale. I'll also inform you that the Soviets deported just as many with impunity, to work in their hard-labor camps, and I've seen lots of Europeans express disgust at Putin's government and his toadies for victim-blaming those who were snatched up and sent back home to work the gulags. They were the very mirror image of the Nazis as they entered Eastern Europe, which is not surprising given how similar said two dictatorships were. Your argument also ignores the many noble men and women who raised fine children, obviously, in the post-WWII environment, and how else could they have raised great children who led the nation to what it is today unless they had decency themselves? They deserve better than to be spat on as monsters especially given what they suffered themselves and how many ignorant people today react to it.