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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4461 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 16, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Whether or not German racial purity laws considered Slavs to be "Aryan" or not isn't terribly important. I guess that's what's actually being argued there. It may or may not be technically true, but it doesn't change the fact that the Nazi regime launched effectively a war of annihilation against the Slavs, seeking to seize "Lebensraum " for the "German race" from them, produced boatloads of propaganda claiming the Slavs were subhuman, and then via the Barbarossa Decree declared that it was in fact a war of extermination and there would be no such thing as a war crime on that front.

And yeah, that's SecureSignals, our resident Nazi apologist. I don't think he'd even object to that label. We do need a little of that, since the anti-Nazi types aren't free from bullshit either, but yeah you might want a large grain of salt on that subject.

for the "German race" from them, produced boatloads of propaganda claiming the Slavs were subhuman

We Slavs are also quite proficient at producing propaganda that Slavs are subhuman.

Though with extremely rare exceptions it was "this ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc is subhuman", not "All Slavs are subhuman".

Barbarossa Decree declared

Unlike Winston Churchill's genocide of Boers or America's extreme attempts to clear out insurgents in Vietnam, Germany was fighting an existential war and was going out hard on insurgents.

How many trials were provided to the people the US murdered with drone strikes?

Germany was fighting an existential war and was going out hard on insurgents.

This is unironically one of the funniest comments I've read all day. You realize that WWII Germany is basically the poster child for aggressive, expansionist war in modern history, right?

Against the 13 colonies of the United states which now includes Iraq, Syria and a bunch of other countries and the British empire and the Soviet union. You realize the Brits unprovoked annexed Iran during the war while already occupying roughly a quarter of the planet. Germany was taking back areas it lost 20 years earlier and that were German.

How that changes anything in terms of "has Germany was anti-slav during nazi times?"

  1. The Germans were so uniquely evil trope is used to justify all sorts of Soviet and Anglo-American imperialism. The Germans weren't uniquely evil or brutal.

  2. The Germans wanting to exterminate everyone who isn't German trope simply isn't true either. Germans wanted to restore Germany and have a more isolationist policy than most other countries at the time.

a more isolationist policy

Invading Poland and the ussr isn't really my idea of isolationism.

I never claimed either of those.

The Germans were pretty evil, but "uniquely" is a much stronger claim that's more difficult to justify. Making it would invite difficult to judge comparisons with everything ever done by every other country, which is why I didn't make it.

I also didn't claim they wanted to exterminate everyone who wasn't German. They treated civilians and POWs of Western allies about as well as you could ask for during a war AFAIK, including even Jews (Jewish soldiers that is, not so much civilians of other European nations they overran). And they were of course allied with Imperial Japan and Italy.

And they weren't quite as annihilationist about Slavs as they were about Jews and Gypsies, but they certainly weren't treated nicely. I think anyone attempting to make the argument that the Nazis were not anti-Slav is ignoring quite a lot of evidence and horrors.

I never claimed either of those.

well, it was reply to person who claimed this

The Germans wanting to exterminate everyone who isn't German trope simply isn't true either.

Well, they wanted to also enslave Slavs that were not planned to be exterminated. And assimilate some of them (Volksdeutsche, Goralvolk etc).

And they were not planning to expand German empire worldwide, they had no plans to invade and conquer say Japan AFAIK. They were not so delusional to plan extermination of USA population on grounds of not being German.

Not that it would make things for Poles/Ukrainians/Russians/etc better if Germans would win WW II.

The Germans weren't uniquely evil or brutal.

Large part of that is more-or-less hidden dual standards. Like with Russia right now large part of anger stems "but in Europe you are not allowed to do that".

(insert that 4chan post about toilet and kitchen here)

Also, there was vision that after WW I we learned better and we will have peace in Europe. France dropping bombs on Lisbon in September 2024 and killing 200 people would not be uniquely evil or brutal either. But I expect that outcry would be massive and far larger than what is triggered by far worse things in Africa. Mostly due to higher expectations.

Their goal was to make Germany strong and big.

I feel like not enough focus is put on what a horrible plan the Nazis actually had and how extremely unlikely they were to actually win WWII. (and this is discounting the trinity test which reduced the odds of a long-term nazi victory to zero)

Any world war by definition entails a European war on more than one front, which the Germans were never going to win and they knew it, never prepared for it because they didn't think it'd either be necessary or even feasible, and didn't think the war they started was going to escalate into another world war. In that sense, you're correct, Germany was never going to win a world war. That, however, also applies to any other great power, or even any alliance of two great powers as well at the time.

Regarding the atom bomb, I think it's worthwhile to point out that 1) the atomic bombings were carried out in a war situation with practically non-existent enemy air defenses, which was not going to be the case in your hypothetical scenario 2) Germany had an extensive program as well to develop and stockpile weapons of mass destruction, namely nerve gas agents and other chemical weapons, which entails second strike capability 3) I wouldn't be so sure to declare that they were never going to develop a functioning atom bomb.

not only there (or in fiction broadly defined) - glorious victory is always more glorious if enemy was strong and you can explain more excesses if enemy is stronger

Imo they get played up in fiction because it's more exciting if the good guys might lose, so people get the impression that it was an evenly matched fight even though it wasn't.

The only good think I could think of to say about the Nazi's plan is that it was less insane than imperial Japan's plan.

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