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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   6208 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for December 2022

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

A few comments from the editor: first, sorry this is a little late, but you know--holidays and all. Furthermore, the number of quality contribution nominations seems to have grown a fair bit since moving to the new site. In fact, as I write this on January 5, there are already 37 distinct nominations in the hopper for January 2023. While we do occasionally get obviously insincere or "super upvote" nominations, the clear majority of these are all plausible AAQCs, and often quite a lot of text to sift through.

Second, this month we have special AAQC recognition for @drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: Career of a Concept began in the Old Country, and has continued to garner AAQC nominations here. It is a great example of the kind of effort and thoughtfulness we like to see. Also judging by reports and upvotes, a great many of us are junkies for good book reviews. The final analysis was actually posted in January, but it contains links to all the previous entries as well, so that's what I'll put here:

Now: on with the show!

Quality Contributions Outside the CW Thread

@Tollund_Man4:

@naraburns:

@Bernd:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@RandomRanger:

@Iconochasm:

Contributions for the week of December 5, 2022

@zeke5123:

@ymeskhout:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@gattsuru:

@Southkraut:

@Bernd:

@problem_redditor:

@FCfromSSC:

@urquan:

@gemmaem:

Sexulation

@RococoBasilica:

@problem_redditor:

Holocaustianity

@johnfabian:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@SecureSignals:

Coloniazism

@gaygroyper100pct:

@screye:

@urquan:

@georgioz:

Contributions for the week of December 12, 2022

@SecureSignals:

@Titus_1_16:

@Dean:

@cjet79:

@JarJarJedi:

@gattsuru:

@YE_GUILTY:

@aqouta:

@HlynkaCG:

Contributions for the week of December 19, 2022

@MathiasTRex:

@To_Mandalay:

Robophobia

@gattsuru:

@IGI-111:

@NexusGlow:

Contributions for the week of December 26, 2022

@FCfromSSC:

@gattsuru:

@LacklustreFriend:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

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given that the Soviets very much wanted to downplay crimes specifically against Jews and place Russians and socialists as the chief victims of German aggression.

A Soviet anecdote:

June 22, 41. A Jew and an Ukrainian are fishing together on the bank of the Dnieper River. Suddenly the loudspeaker says: Today, June 22, at 4 a.m., without declaring war, Fascist Germany has attacked the Soviet Union.

The Jew says:

– My G-d, war! Now all these problems and worries will come up. So this means I have to send my wife to Tashkent [Uzbekistan, deep in Central Asia, where much of Soviet industry and civilians were evacuated] with the whole family, all the children! We will have to order a container to transfer furniture, all that we have. Then I'll have to find a way to get to that Tashkent myself, find a small vegetable warehouse – you've got to work somewhere, this is war after all. This is no joke, how can all this be...

The Ukrainian nods:

– Yeah, it's war, such problems...

– What problems do you have!? You get a rifle and – to the front.

Make of that what you will.

Ukrainians:

The real number of victims during WWII is still not fully known. Some relevant data is still held in Russian archives and is not available for non-Russian researchers. However, of the 41.7 million people living in Ukrainian Soviet Republic before the war, only 27.4 million were alive in Ukraine in 1945. Official data says that at least 8 million Ukrainians lost their lives: 5.5 - 6 million civilians, and more than 2.5 million natives of Ukraine were killed at the front. The data varies between 8 to 14 million killed, however, only 6 million have been identified.

Certainly in terms of raw numbers more Soviets than Jews perished, but there was a differing zeal to which the Germans pursued and killed Jews. Somewhat ironically they were aided in this by Soviet censorship of near-any information concerning their chief ideological enemies: most Soviet Jews were not aware the Nazis were anti-semitic. For example when the decision was made to liquidate all the Jews of Kiev, the German authorities were shocked at the turnout when they demanded Jews present themselves for "relocation"; ~33,000, more than double what they expected. It took 3 days to murder them all, with help for Ukrainian militias.

Ukrainians themselves were of course of various minds with respect to the Soviet authorities; especially many of the older generation were welcoming of the Germans, at least initially. Currently I'm reading Retribution: The Soviet Reconquest of Central Ukraine, 1943-44, and so far it has featured a lot of anecdotes from German soldiers about helpful Ukrainians. This was of course partly merely survival tactics. The German logic was brutal: the book quotes Erich Koch (Reichskommissar of Ukraine) as saying:

If these people [the Ukrainians] work for ten hours a day, eight of those must be for us. All sentimental considerations must be put aside. These people must be ruled with iron force as this will help us to win the war. We have not liberated the Ukraine for their pleasure, but to secure the essential Lebensraum and food supply for Germany.

and further:

We did not come here to dispense Manna from heaven, we came here to create the preconditions of victory … We are the master race and must bear in mind that the most insignificant German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times as valuable as the local population.

The Nazis were at least as willing as the Soviets, if not more, to work Ukrainians to death for their utopia; and that of course would only be the beginning.

Certainly in terms of raw numbers more Soviets than Jews perished, but there was a differing zeal to which the Germans pursued and killed Jews. Somewhat ironically they were aided in this by Soviet censorship of near-any information concerning their chief ideological enemies: most Soviet Jews were not aware the Nazis were anti-semitic.

Pro-Nazi propaganda lasted only two years before the war, propaganda line before was strongly anti fascist and anti-Nazi, and Nazi antisemitism was well publicized in Soviet Union. The problem was that all Soviet propaganda with its constant twists and turns was seen as not entirely reliable.

When you learn to disregard the boy who cries wolf all the time, you are out of luck when wolf really comes.

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