This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
There are times when fighting against the odds is wise and times where it is unwise. Let's examine the death toll for WW2 amongst various powers:
Denmark lost 0.16% of its population, barely a scratch. Surrendering quickly to Germany served them well. The US lost 0.3%. The UK, Belgium, France and Italy suffered around 1%. Czechoslovakia suffered around 2-3%, mostly Holocaust deaths as opposed to military deaths. Romania - 3%. Japan 3-4%. Hungary, 5-9% (a large number of Holocaust deaths plus they did a fair bit of fighting, like Romania).
Yugoslavia, 6-10%. Germany, 8%. Greece, 7-11%. The Soviet Union: 14%. But by far the hardest hit was Poland at 17%. Of course, all these countries faced widely different threats, some were luckier in their position than others, some took on much greater challenges.
However, nobody lost more than the Poles in WW2, nobody left that war in a worse position than Poland. Germany was partitioned but at least some got to escape communism. The Poles ended up being pushed westward, losing a fair few cities and enormous numbers of people. And they had to suffer another 45 years of communism.
Polish late interwar leaders faced a clear and unpleasant choice - Germany or Russia. They chose neither and got demolished by both. This was a terrible decision. Moral principles dealt them a crushing blow that the country has scarcely recovered from today. How many millions of people is standing up for freedom and independence worth? My country escaped lightly with 0.58%, yet 0.58% is still an enormous death toll! That was 60 COVIDs for us, targeting the young rather than the old. We in the Anglosphere suffered very little in the last 200 years, we were nearly always the strongest and won the most important wars. Yet we have a vast apparatus of war memorials and reverence for those sacrificed in war. Can we even imagine the sacrifices that others have made?
I have more sympathy for the Czech leaders who escaped total disaster than the Poles who plunged their country into catastrophe. Sometimes surrendering is the best course of action. We can only imagine the internal feelings of those who proudly chose death before dishonour, only to receive double portions of both.
Respect for agreements, obligation and one's reputation are secondary to the core health of the nation.
There is no plausible scenario in which we emerge from the war in a meaningfully better condition.
We ally with the USSR? Today's invasion might get postponed slightly, but the Soviets would still enter the eastern territories and loot under the guise of help. Katyń might not happen in 1940, but these officers would be probably killed after the war, like e.g. Pilecki. The nightmare march westward in 1945 during which Soviets raped basically every encountered woman between the ages of 10 and 80 would still happen. The latter is most certain out of those, as it historically did happen post-Barbarossa, when we were technically allied with USSR. After the Yałta, instead of a satellite state, we could have ended up as a fully fledged Soviet republic, which means the next 45 of oppression are some 50% worse.
We ally with the Reich? They had no scruples breaking Ribbentrop-Mołotow, why would they have any breaking a (highly implausible, ahistorical) Ribbentrop-Beck? (Seriously, the guy who I entrust my life to w/r/t historical knowledge, who is not a normie but a Mishima-and-Evola-reading /ourguy/, completely thrashes the linked book). The Nazis would still shell and bombard us eventually. The Holocaust would still have happened, maybe worse are the government would be collaborating with the German war-death complex instead of resisting it.
But long term, the worst would come after the war. See, nobody cares too much about Vichy Government these days, or the Swiss, or how Sweden supplied Germans with steel. That is because they had decades to wage a successful diplomatic and propaganda campaigns to bleach their history. Hell, pretty much nobody holds a grudge against Germany now. But Poland would be a poor satellite state, unable to have significant democratic relations with the west. What is nowadays a relatively fringe position would be a mainstream one: all the responsibility for the Holocaust would be offloaded from Germany to Poland. We would remain a pariah state for centuries. We might have not get allowed into the EU and NATO, and become a Belarus-style authoritarian backwater. The war that is happening right now across our border might have been happening on our soil instead.
That would be extremely unlikely, Soviets had no plans for so like they had with Finland (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelian_Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republic )
Or Poland could same position as Yugoslavia, socialist in a name but without any Soviet armies on it, being a member of non-aligned and trading with everyone.
AFAIK in countries where governments and local population resisted it, Holocaust did not happen, including even German allies until Germans couped them when Germans saw they were losing the war. I.e. SS officials come to Italian officials, and said "we need a list of Jews -- Ok, come back next month" next month: "Please give us the list -- Sorry, we didn't do it, come back next month please".
More options
Context Copy link
Here's another idea: how about offering Czechoslovakia military assistance in the face of a potential German invasion instead of grabbing the opportunity of taking part in its territorial mutilation in 1938?
More options
Context Copy link
This is just made-up. There is no reason to think that Russia might have a significantly greater chance of invading Poland based on a point of divergence some 80 years ago. Nobody can predict what would happen over such a time period. The decision not to pick one of the two choices INCREASED the chance of Russian invasion, it didn't lower it. The Ribbentrop-Beck pact book is nonsense (why would Germany invade Western Europe if allied with Poland?) that doesn't mean all variations of similar ideas are nonsense.
This is also ahistorical, Hungary collaborated. Romania collaborated eagerly. Various Soviet minorities were happy to liquidate Jews. Yet responsibility still lies with Germany. It's not as though Hungary and Romania have enormous influence in world opinion to cover up their misdeeds.
Ally with Germany and hand over Danzig in exchange for parts of Belorussia. Ally with Russia and get gains at Germany's expense (presumably more than received in real life).
Both of those are more realistic options than spurning both powers. There is absolutely no reason to think that the world is fair, that vast suffering is compensated for with rewards of any kind.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
While I agree that the inter-war Polish leadership played their bad hand badly, I don't see what the likely good outcome for Poland or the Poles is if you assume that Hitler's grand strategy was to pursue Grossreich and Lebensraum - which is what Hitler had said his grand strategy was when speaking to sympathetic audiences ever since he wrote Mein Kampf. Grossreich, even in its benign form of reversing Versailles, implies the annexation by Germany of the parts of western Poland with large ethnic-German minorities and the reduction of the ethnic Polish population of that territory to second-class citizenship. And the available Lebensraum was either in Poland or beyond it. If Poland allies with Hitler, the eventual double-cross is even more overdetermined than Barbarossa was.
Quite apart from Hitler's designs on Poland itself, any timeline where Hitler eventually attacks the Soviet Union involves Poland being ravaged by the German army on the way out and the Soviet army on the way back. This includes the scenario where Poland allies with the Soviet Union - the fact that Barbarossa happened in our timeline is strong evidence that Hitler would have invaded Soviet-allied Poland, particularly as Poland doesn't benefit from the Anglo-French guarantee in this scenario and the Spanish Civil War is a precedent that no Western country is likely to kick up a fuss if Hitler attacks Communists. Realistically, without western help Nazi Germany curbstomps the Soviets, but even if you rate the Red Army as better ex ante than it turns out ex post the best outcome is that the Soviets successfully defend Poland and Poland ends up de facto occupied by Soviets. The only reason Finland gets Soviet client-state status on as generous terms as they do is that they demonstrated the ability to give the Soviets a bloody nose, something the Poles don't have.
So to get a good outcome, you need Hitler to stop. And you pretty much need him to stop voluntarily - the way things played out in our timeline is strong evidence that the process of making him stop probably involves armies crossing Poland in a way which is catastrophic for the civilian population. The military scenario where Britain and France take the initiative in the phony war period and quickly defeat Germany isn't plausible militarily, and even if it was there was nothing Poland could do to make it more likely. Once you accept that, Polish policy looks sane (though incompetent).
In any case, if you don't count Holocausted Jews then Poland's death toll is in the normal range for eastern Europe. One of the dirty secrets of Polish history is that the pre-war Polish government would not have counted Holocausted Jews when evaluating their own performance.
In real history Poland was moved westward by Stalin. The Germans could've moved Poland eastwards, taken Danzig and so on while giving them land from Russia and Belarus. If there was one thing Russia has no shortage of, it's land. Or if they'd fought alongside Russia, they would've surely gotten more land in the peace and better treatment. The Russians treated Romania better than Poland since Romania switched sides.
There was no good outcome on offer, that's my point. The Poles ordered 'good outcome' in the restaurant and they received a double helping of bad outcome.
Territorially and demographically, it makes sense to pick a nearby ally with a strong army. The Poles did not do this and suffered immensely. One German invasion, one Soviet invasion then at the end of the war another Soviet invasion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's certainly... a take. What exactly were they supposed to do? Their country had only recently been created- until recently their land was part of Russia and Germany, so it's natural that both of those countries wanted it back. Is there some alternative universe where they voluntarily surrender to the USSR and then Germany just leaves them alone?
Literally any other option would have been a better idea than putting trust in a British defense guarantee.
but you would trust a nazi or soviet defense guarantee? Sometimes there just aren't any winning options.
A neighboring state can at least conceivably provide military assistance. Britain cannot.
More options
Context Copy link
Also, correct me if in wrong but was it really resistance to the Nazis/Soviets that caused the deaths or that they ended up being a battleground between the soviets and Nazis as well as having a disproportionate number of Jews? Their disproportionate suffering was due to geography and demographics, not diplomacy.
It seems to me that much of the destruction would have happened either way, but there being a small outside chance that the soviets/Nazis would leave them alone and route around them if they got deterred by the British security guarantees.
Either of the parties routing around them seems like an unrealistic prospect considering their location. In hindsight, the strategy that would probably have preserved the most Polish lives (if perhaps not other things that the Poles valued) would have been to immediately and enthusiastically join one of the two warring parties, preferably the Nazis as they had the initial momentum behind them. The extra ~30m population and industrial base would have probably made enough of a difference to turn the Battle of Moscow into an Axis victory, rapidly putting us in an alternative history timeline where it does not seem so likely that Poland is turned into a primary battleground again anytime soon.
...and then American nukes hitting German cities, not touching Poland?
Nuke availability was nowhere near the point where you could just throw them out of spite without having an invasion army lined up to follow up, and a German victory in Russia surely would have put any Normandy plans at least a few years behind schedule - long enough for the German atomic bomb programme to catch up, at which point there would just be MAD.
Within a year we had seven more nukes, despite massive demobilization of the Manhattan Project after Japan's surrender. The original plan was to shoot for seven bombs per month by then, a rate which we passed in 1948 despite the peace-time.
Even if for some reason plutonium production during an active nuclear war was still limited to only 7 bombs per year, a target turning into a mushroom cloud every couple months with no end in sight is shocking enough that you'd expect spite to be the resource in too-limited supply first.
"The point in 1942 when the army relinquished control of the project was its zenith in terms of the number of personnel devoted to the effort, and this was no more than about seventy scientists, with about forty devoting more than half their time to nuclear fission research. After this the number diminished dramatically"
A tenth of a Manhattan Project (at most? I'd bet the ratio of engineers was even worse), under active attack, and ideologically determined to disparage that idiot Einstein's "Jewish physics", is not going to be producing counter-nukes by 1946.
More options
Context Copy link
Doubtful.
Even with a clean win on the eastern front Germany would be resource limited relative the US and without any real means of delivering the nukes, assuming they were built. German bombers and V-weapons were stretching thier legs just to hit London with an 1000 kg payload. Carrying 5 times that to US industrial centers like philidelphia Pittsburgh and Detroit would've been a non-starter. Meanwhile almost all of germany but most importantly Berlin would've been well within the range of nuclear-equipped B29s flying out of Reykjavik. The distances involved would actually be a couple hundred miles shorter (roughly 1,475 miles one-way vs 1,600) and with more favorable winds for most of the year than the historical strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Meanwhile the US and UK also enjoy a substantial advantage in the form of a meaningful surface Navies and an integrated air defence network where as the Germans were still dependent on visual spotting and individual radar equipped aircraft. In short individual allied raiders have a far greater chance of penetrating German terretory than induvidual german raiders do the US or UK. This disparity was the practical justification for the shift towards V weapons in the first place.
It'll be at least the late 40s maybe 1950 before Von Braun can build the Nazis an effective R-7 clone and thats assuming he doesn't drag his feet or the German industrial heartland isn't already sprouting mushroom clouds.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ally with Germany against Russia or ally with Russia against Germany. At least then the balance of power wouldn't be totally against them. They would have at least one vaguely friendly power nearby, rather than two enemies.
Either one necessitates sacrifices. Both countries wanted land back. But what did Poland's policy of equidistance between Germany and Russia get them, other than megadeaths? They got the worst possible outcome, Russia and Germany allying against them.
Ally with a power whose leader considers your people to be 'life unworthy of life' and brags about how he's going to conquer your lands, kill everyone and move his own people in? Seems unwise.
Of course, we know with hindsight that the Soviet Union would also end up conducting genocides on its subject peoples (like the Holodomor and similar genocides that Stalin carried out).
I can't say I blame them for choosing none of the above.
He showed up for Pilsudski's funeral and really liked the man.
More options
Context Copy link
Ahistorical. He had never said such a thing about the Poles/Slavs.
Even more ahistorical. Nowhere in Mein Kampf or in any of his private or public remarks does he hint at a plan to subjugate Poland. Not that there were no reasons for Beck to be suspicious of Hitler's apparently moderate stance -- obviously he would not have allowed Poland to remain an equal partner forever even under the best circumstances. But up to this time, Germany's re-expansion had been accomplished without bloodshed and his demands of Poland were not unreasonable, as even the British had generally agreed until they issued their defense guarantee at the last minute, fueling Polish recklessness.
The Polish leadership were more afraid of genocide at the hands of the Soviets than of the Nazis.
He may not have used that exact quote, but he wasn't secret about his views about the Slavs.
He talks extensively in Mein Kampf about subjugating the entirety of Eastern Europe. More to the point, he actually did it.
This was after the war started, after his initial plans were thrown into confusion by Britain's unexpected (because irrational, unfulfillable, and at odds with earlier policy) guarantee to Poland. Hitler insisted even in e.g. private communiques with his generals that he wanted no war with Poland.
His foreign policy record up to that point was that of an able, calculating (if ambitious) diplomatist, not of a megalomaniac who would accept nothing less than the prompt extermination of all racial enemies. In Mein Kampf, he definitely does not present a vision of German annexation let alone genocide of all of Eastern Europe. What he does repeat a number of times is the need for more "living space" while gesturing vaguely to the east (or Russia and her vassal states as the Wikipedia quote has it, i.e., not Poland) and talking up the Bolshevik threat. 90% of his vitriol is reserved for Jews and Communists. The Slavs as such are spoken of in a way more reminiscent of the way the Irish were discussed by Anglo-American conservatives during their early waves of immigration: domestically (in Austria), they pervert democratic institutions with their lower standard of culture and their pursuit of ethnic interest, and take up political space that should belong to the Austrian/Anglo majority. His overarching foreign policy objectives were 1. the destruction of Communism (and, similarly in his eyes, European Jewry), 2. the reunification of existing ethnically German regions under one government, and 3. the colonization of some of Eastern Europe. Since the Poles at least shared Hitler's hostility to Communism, it was hardly a given that genociding them would have been his first choice. As I said before, the Polish leadership recognized this: Soviet policy posed a greater existential risk. In the short term at least, the alliance probably would have been treated similarly to how the Romanian alliance was in fact treated later on: mercenarily, like alliances on both sides of the war, not as a conscious stalling tactic to prepare for their eventual genocide.
Edit: This may downplaying Hitler's imperiousness. The point is that whatever he had in store for the Poles, it was probably better than the predictable consequences of their refusal to accept the weakness of their position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link