15-01-2004 12:38									#31
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How about the Spanish conquest of Hispaneola? There's a reason there is almost no native American blood left on the island - the Spanish exterminated them, and had to import slaves. The United States genocide of the Native Americans, while not as industrially systematic nor as rapid (impossible given the technology of the time), included (in California) government sanctioned human hunting (aka Planet of the Apes) and massacres of peaceful villages (because the hostiles knew not to trust the white man and were harder to find) as in the Salt River Massacre, which was done by a politician to gain votes! He was defeated, but never charged with murder. Many Germans rightfully make a point that they do a better job of teaching the next generation about the evils perpetrated by their own country than the US does. They have a point. Ask Native Americans if you want an alternative view.

	15-01-2004 13:31									#32
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quote: Originally posted by Hurricane Where did you get these figures? The whole population of Gaul was like 3-4 million during Roman times.

Perhaps there:

	15-01-2004 13:56									#33
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Ye old good Serb's wit

	15-01-2004 14:05									#34
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You don't like the picture Heresson?

	15-01-2004 15:25									#35
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quote: Originally posted by shawnmmcc How about the Spanish conquest of Hispaneola? There's a reason there is almost no native American blood left on the island - the Spanish exterminated them, and had to import slaves. The United States genocide of the Native Americans, while not as industrially systematic nor as rapid (impossible given the technology of the time), included (in California) government sanctioned human hunting (aka Planet of the Apes) and massacres of peaceful villages (because the hostiles knew not to trust the white man and were harder to find) as in the Salt River Massacre, which was done by a politician to gain votes! He was defeated, but never charged with murder. Many Germans rightfully make a point that they do a better job of teaching the next generation about the evils perpetrated by their own country than the US does. They have a point. Ask Native Americans if you want an alternative view.

In the Spanish case, and without trying to hide the brutality that Spanish and other european people did in these times, there was also a problem with diseases. The native Americans had serious problems fighting the European's diseases that the conquerors bring to the islands/the mainland.

	15-01-2004 18:02									#36
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Systematic. And the sad truth is that Germany couldn't have such pwoer if the crushing majoreity of the then population weren't Nazis. Nothing's black and white but that's one occasion where it comes very close to being that.

	15-01-2004 18:05									#37
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quote: Well the IJA brutality was certainly bad but it was more feudal than modern and more by accident than design in some cases (like mistreatment of POW's). So I don't think it's in the same class as the sleak modern German murder machine. The chilling difference is Nazi horrors were always intentional, meticulously planned, industrialised and used the latest technology. This is what sets them apart and troubles thinkers so much - modernisation was supposed to overcome barbarism and irrational atavistic hatred but the Nazis showed this wasn't true.

Exactly.

	15-01-2004 18:35									#38
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AH is correct

	15-01-2004 19:34									#39
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Nazi/German troops atrocities were mostly systemic and by design, at least in France. Without orders for atrocity, the Wehrmacht was among the most disciplined forces dealing with occupied civilians. Its often brought to the attention of USA officers in france in 1944 that the liberaters were more likely to indulge in private theft, murder, and rape than were the conquerors/occupiers. Unless one village or other group was officialy targeted for repreisals, demolition, or anti guerilla action, the local French had little complaint about the occupiers. However the official saction atrocities of the Germans were many times as deadly as the activity of private crimminals in USA and CW forces in France. The Germans appear to have been much more inclinded to unofficial atrocity, as well as official atrocity, in the East.

	15-01-2004 19:45									#40
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Well, the nazi regime was fighting an ideological war, speically out East- that separetd it from all other players who were in it for more cotidian reasons. Certainly the soviets had some organized attrocities, and I would say the Japanese at best purposely turned a blind eye to some attrocities beign committed (like what happened in Nanking).

	15-01-2004 19:52									#41
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Yaroslav, I don't know if you know the history. When they resisted, the Spanish systematically cut off the hands of every male on the island they could catch. That's about as systematic, and brutal, as it gets. It remaind me hideously of the rape, pillage, THEN burn joke about the dumb Viking. However, I doubt the natives of Hispaneola would find it amusing. The Spanish did learn, instead working most of their slaves to death after that, those that didn't starve or die of disease.

Disease left the Native American populations without the reserve to fight the war. Their populations were already down due to disease and then they lacked European's technology. Whether it was organized "Injun hunts" in California, political massacres, or just systematic extermination (Hispaneola) its brutal and as systematic as the respective cultures got. I'm talking context, given what could be done at the time.

As a quick aside to Jews and atrocities, some American individual with a sense of righteousness and justice, but absolutely lacking in the common (sense, that is) put Holocaust survivors in charge of internment camps full of actual and suspected Nazis while the US figured out what to do with whom, and determined what level of war crimes to prosecute. The camps were absolutely brutal. If I had survived and my wife and little girl had died at Beltzen, I would have done the same damn thing. I'm not a nice person.

Reference the Japanese and their brutality simply being medieval, I disagree. I have read extensively on the period (a good one to start is "Japan's War" by Edwin Hoyt, told from the JAPANESE veiwpoint). They had been indoctrinated just as thoroughly with a modern, debased so-called version of Shinto that the government had been teaching since the 1920's, predating the Hitler Jungen by a decade. So you had essentially most if not all of the soldiers serving as regular ground troops coming out of this government indoctrination - if that's not modern, and systematic, tell me what is?

Part of that debased Shinto included Emperor worship, but the other part stressed Japanes racial superiority over, not just the Caucasians, but also over other Asiatics. Thus the Japanese soldiers, and also the mid-level officers, found absolutely nothing wrong with the massacre of civilians. I strongly suspect that you found more opposition and fatalism concerning the Holocaust among the Germans, especially domestically, than you found in Japan concerning the army atrocities there. It wasn't as systematic, instead it was casual like squashing a bug. Plus the Japanese simply neither had the beauracracy or the resources to engage in anything with the completeless of the Holocaust.

However, the numbers were horrific, and remember that Japan never came close to occupying all of China. From wikipedia: "Chinese suffered much worse, losing approximately 3.22 million soldiers. 9.13 million civilians died in crossfire, and another 8.4 million as non-military casualties." We're talking a level of casual brutality not seen any else in the world, most of the 8.4 million died as slave labor or were just killed whenever any Japanese soldier decided to, from a private to a general. Both they and the Nazi were utterly horrific, and I agree with the previous posters, especially if you are part of the targeted people, it doesn't make much difference whether it's German industrial extermination, Injun hunting in California, or watching your daughter gang raped until death, after which the Japanese soldiers bayonet everyone in your village.

	15-01-2004 20:26									#42
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I read "Infantry Aces" and "Panzer Aces," both books by Franz Kurowski [sp] which detail the intimate personal accounts of German soldiers during the war, both Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. Also, a while ago I read "Soldaten," which is mostly comprised of letters and journal entries.

The Kurowski books are bit dry, but I was struck by how similar they were to the books I've read about American and British GIs' personal experiences. On the Eastern front, the German soldiers are afraid of the Russian soldiers, seeing them as almost monsters. This is largely due to a lot of propoganda. But they're also horrified by the Soviet willingness to send their own men to certain death in wave after wave against the German machine gun batteries. Many of the soldiers are described as being visibly sickened by the carnage. There's one story of how a German lieutenant and his team sneak to the Russian side of the lines to take out a pill box. On they way, they encounter a Russian sentry and knock him unconscious. After they've finished the mission and return to base, they remember the Russian and where they left him. Knowing he'll freeze to death, the lieutenant and one of his men go back and get the Russian, bringing him back as a P.O.W.

Of course this doesn't prove much in a global sense of the war, no. But I'm also reminded about the stories of U.S. and British troops murdering German P.O.Ws. It seems to me the major difference is that the Nazi powers-that-be let such things happen sans consequence, even encouraging the worst in soldiers who were already under the strain of war. The Allies, however, had official restraint (not counting the Soviet counter-offensive), so soldiers just couldn't get away with such enflamed reactions. In other words, the stress of war brings out the worst in many soldiers, and in a structure where they are given free reign to indulge their basest instincts, they will do so.

I also agree that the IJA's atrocities can't be dismissed as simply having a "more primitive" mindset. The Japanese government certainly encouraged the notion that all non-Japanese were subhuman, as shawn mentioned. I don't think there was much difference between them and the Nazi regime. Japan never went to the technical tour de force for genocide that the Nazis did, no, but they made up for it in their zeal for massacre.

	15-01-2004 20:52									#43
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quote: Originally posted by shawnmmcc Yaroslav, I don't know if you know the history. When they resisted, the Spanish systematically cut off the hands of every male on the island they could catch. That's about as systematic, and brutal, as it gets. It remaind me hideously of the rape, pillage, THEN burn joke about the dumb Viking. However, I doubt the natives of Hispaneola would find it amusing. The Spanish did learn, instead working most of their slaves to death after that, those that didn't starve or die of disease. Disease left the Native American populations without the reserve to fight the war. Their populations were already down due to disease and then they lacked European's technology. Whether it was organized "Injun hunts" in California, political massacres, or just systematic extermination (Hispaneola) its brutal and as systematic as the respective cultures got. I'm talking context, given what could be done at the time.

I wasn't saying that there is no shame in that kind of actions of the Spanish conquerors, I'm only pointing that I believe that disease is the main reason of indias extintion in La Hispaniola, with a population that get down from some hundred of thousand people in 1492 to around 500 in 1548.

	15-01-2004 21:15									#44
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quote: Originally posted by yaroslav I wasn't saying that there is no shame in that kind of actions of the Spanish conquerors, I'm only pointing that I believe that disease is the main reason of indias extintion in La Hispaniola, with a population that get down from some hundred of thousand people in 1492 to around 500 in 1548.

That it dropped so fast was mainly the work of disease, BUT spanish actions were what decimated the leftovers so decisively, and why there were no natives left in Hispanola 100 years later.

	15-01-2004 21:20									#45
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi Agreeing with Boris here. People seem to think that something needs to be unique or special in order to be acknowledged an atrocity. It does not diminish the horror of the Holocaust by making comparisons to other forms of genocide but rather serves to illustrate a repeating theme in human society. .

so ben, i take it you havent read Fackenheim yet, have you?

	15-01-2004 21:26									#46
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Exactly (concerning the disease), but from what I understand, and this is a vague memory a essentially a foot note in a history text I read years ago (over a decade) but wasn't there something about that famous woodcut showing the slaughter, and it caused some sort of reaction in Europe, indicating that even by the standards of the time that was considered pretty horrific (and stupid). If anybody knows the reference, I'd be interested.

While I agree that while disease did the greater part of the dirty work, it made no difference in this case. The Spaniards were going to cut the hands off of every living male! Intent, folks, intent, just as vicious as the Nazis or IJA. Disease made it easier for them to accomplish, and without it, given the technology of the time, they might not have even succeeded. But they were blood thirsty, vicious sociopaths that lot.

	15-01-2004 21:50									#47
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None of the cases cited come even remotely close to sharing the characteristics of the Holocaust.

That is best illustrated by taking any one of the cases, putting it side by side with the Holocaust and asking what points of similarity exist. In most of the cases there may be a similarity in the level of brutality exhibited by those involved or of numbers. But that is all.

I will illustrate the difference in one other way. The way that has haunted people of my generation and the generation which came before us.

Ask yourself in each case whether you have any understanding of how the horror, whatever it is, could have happened. Perhaps it demonstrates me to have some decent measure of brutality in me but I have no real problem in understanding how the immigrants to the US could come to wipe out nearly all the indiginous population, nor why Serb has killed Croat and Croat, Serb down through a long age. Nor how a conqueror from the Japanese cultural background would employ prisoners of war or the population of a conquered nation in slave labour camps - caring little that lots died. Nor why the members of the Golden Horde raped, pillaged and murdered on a huge scale.

But when I turn to the Holocaust this understanding fails me. Easy to understand why such a one as Hitler could conceive of the Final Solution and to plan it. Easy enough (just) to understand why the disgusting cronies that he gathered around himself on his rise to power would go along with it. But it took a concerted effort on the part of far, far more people than that, and the compacency of an entire nation, for these bizarre and hideous plans to be put into effect.

I know German people, lived in Germany for five years as a child, have read German novels and histories, heard German music. My grandfather fought the Germans through a long war and my father followed suit. My father spent long years under the guard of Germans in a prisoner of war camp.

They are not a brutal people and they do not have a weird Japanese style culture.

Yes Hitler started them down the road to acquire one - with his silly Superman idea and his Hitler Youth. But those things were just green shoots in Germany which would have taken several generations to take firm hold.

It just defies belief that the people who courageously and honourably fought my grandfather, courageously and honourably fought my father, exposed to the cultural influences which are there plainly to be seen would have ever thought that what was done was anything but the abomination which it plainly is.

And yet as far as I know you can number the voices which spoke against it on the fingers of one hand. And the numbers who actively and energetically helped the thing along outnumbers a thousandfold those few, like Shindler, who did their covert bit to undermine it from within.

Add to this just a smidgeon of puzzlemnent at how quietly the victims seem to have gone to their deaths and the whole thing is just horribly dispiriting.

Because you get to the conclusion that, wholly unlike the Golden Horde or the actions of the Japanese, these sort of things could apparently happen anywhere at all.

In England, in France, In Canada or the US, in Africa, Asia or Australia. Anywhere where some mad politician could so entrench himself in power that honest, well meaning folk are cowed and too scared to speak out however appalling the things they are called upon to participate in might be.

And that, if true, is just demeaning. Of all of us.

	15-01-2004 22:14									#48
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quote: Originally posted by shawnmmcc Exactly (concerning the disease), but from what I understand, and this is a vague memory a essentially a foot note in a history text I read years ago (over a decade) but wasn't there something about that famous woodcut showing the slaughter, and it caused some sort of reaction in Europe, indicating that even by the standards of the time that was considered pretty horrific (and stupid). If anybody knows the reference, I'd be interested. While I agree that while disease did the greater part of the dirty work, it made no difference in this case. The Spaniards were going to cut the hands off of every living male! Intent, folks, intent, just as vicious as the Nazis or IJA. Disease made it easier for them to accomplish, and without it, given the technology of the time, they might not have even succeeded. But they were blood thirsty, vicious sociopaths that lot.

Yes, it's was horrible but I doubt it was horrible by the standards of the time, because as far as I know, the main reaction come from inside Spain and not from other countries. Although the laws weren't obey, the Spanish in the XVI century made some of the most humanitarian laws about indians.

	16-01-2004 00:19									#49
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To Tingkai,

You keep asking for examples, I keep giving them. Find me a source that has as mouch respect as these ones, that says what you want.

The Fall of Berlin 1945
by Antony Beevor
Viking Press, Hardcover - 512 pages (May 2002)

You can actually read any book on WWII that has accounts of tactical level combat with a Waffen SS unit to find acts of bravery, fair play, or chivalry. This happens to be the one I am reading at the moment and it is chalk full of it. I mentioned the circumstances above, but well, you predictably ignored it. This is the author that also wrote "Stalingrad," so if you wish to attack the author go ahead and break yourself on that one. But, like I said, just becasue there are individual acts of goodness on the behalf of the Waffen SS, their overall reputation is derervedly black.




Death by Government
R. J. Rummel

quote: More than 8,200 estimates from 1,000 sources to document findings. Historical sketches of the four regimes that have committed the most democide -- one million or more people [from a review]

quote: We all know the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. Most American do NOT know that the ten worst totalitarian governments murdered more than 136 million OTHER people during the 20th century. The following is a list of the ten governments responsible for all those deaths.

"(* = about 2 million MURDERS)

Soviet Gulag (1917-87)
-Executions during collectivization, etc.
61,911,000
* ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Communist Chinese State (1949-87)
-Executions of landlords, peasants, etc.
35,236,000
** ***** ***** *****

Nazi State (1933-45)
-6 mil Jews, 5 mil Poles, 10 mil others
20,946,000
***** *****

Chinese Nationalist (1928-49)
-Purges of communists, etc.
10,214,000
*****

Japan's military (1936-45)
-Nanking massacre, etc.
5,964,000
***

Khmer Rouge (1975-79)
-Khmer Rouge kill 1/3 of Cambodians
2,035,000
*

Turkey's Young Turks (1909-18)
-Slaughter of Turkey's Armenians
1,883,000
*

N. Vietnamese (1945-1987)
-S Vietnam's democide = 90,000.
1.670,000
*

Poland killed ethnic Germans
-8 million fled Poland (1945-1948)
1,585,000
*

West Pakistan (1958-87)
-E. Pakistan Hindus killed or expelled
1,503,000
*
TOTAL # Murdered = 142,000,000+"

And again since you can't seem to find your sources, I make sure you can find this one.

Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. Don't know city: Transaction Pub, 1997.

There are these big building in most cities, full of books you have obviously failed to read. If you take that line of information above to the nice lady at the desk, she will find it for you, and maybe give you a piece of candy. There are no pictures and the letters are small, but try to struggle through it so you can stop sounding like a fool

-Pat

	16-01-2004 01:33									#50
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quote: Originally posted by East Street Trader It is nonsense to say that there is any other example in human history of groups of people running into millions having been rounded up, taken to places designed for the purpose and there exterminated.

Actually there is an example- the genocide of Turkish Armenians. There were massed forced migrations into the Syrian desert with the intention of starving the Armenians to death en masse. Such starvation was probably the biggest killer in that action.

The death toll of this genocide is often given as 1.5 million- but only if restricted to Armenians in the "Young Turk" era. Extend the timescale on to 1925 and include Assyrians, Anatolians and ethnic Greeks and you're looking closer to 3 million. It's the great forgotten genocide of the 20th century.

	16-01-2004 01:33									#51
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how about make a filth of the best genocidists?

	16-01-2004 01:37									#52
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I can't render genocide funny.

	16-01-2004 01:38									#53
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but the fate of the people of Paraguay you can?

	16-01-2004 01:43									#54
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I fully agree with East Street Trader's post. What makes the Holocaust special is not some undefined "more systematic" reason, but that ordinary, civilized, western European people, i.e. someone who we easily can identify us with, so easily committed mass murder.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning. The new pocket version also includes a very well-written and lengthy critisism on Daniel Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". A must-read to for anybody interested in how perfecty normal people became mass-murderers.

	16-01-2004 01:43									#55
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quote: Originally posted by Patroklos To Tingkai, You keep asking for examples, I keep giving them. Find me a source that has as mouch respect as these ones, that says what you want. Soviet Gulag (1917-87) -Executions during collectivization, etc. 61,911,000 * ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. Don't know city: Transaction Pub, 1997. -Pat

Uh, this is a gross simplification- for a better breakdown of the figures see S. Maksudov, 'Losses Suffered by the Population of the U.S.S.R., 1918-1958' in 'The Samizadat Register' ed. R. Medvedyev,publ. London, 1981, also M. Ellmann, S. Maksudov, 'Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: a note', Europe-Asia Studies vol. 46, no.4 (1994) pp. 671-80*

The Civil War and Volga Famine: 1918-22:

minimum 3 million dead, maximum 5 million

Political repression in 1920s:

unknown- tens of thousands

Forced collectivization and dekulakization post-1929:

minimum 10 million, maximum 14 million

Ukrainian Terror/Famine, 1932-3:

minimum 6 million, maximum 7 million

Great Terror, 1934-9 and Stalin's Purges:

1 million

Deportations to the Gulag, to 1937:

10 million

Shootings and random executions, 1937-39:

1 million

Deportations from Eastern Poland, Baltic States, and Romania, 1939-40:

2 million

Foreign P.O.W.s, Poles, Finns, Germans, Romanians, Japanese:

1 million

Deportations to the Gulag, 1939-45:

7 million

Deportations/exile of nationalities, Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars:

1 million

Post WWII screening of repatriates and inhabitants of ex-occupied territory:

minimum 5 million, maximum 6 million.

(* Several categories overlap)

Which gives a gross total (median estimate) of 54 million.

	16-01-2004 01:43									#56
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That was different. The Paraguayans never stopped fighting- that was the problem.

	16-01-2004 01:54									#57
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quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov Any survey of history will force you to arrive at the conclusion that the Nazi massacres were par for the course. Yes, they were more systematic than others, but welcome to the modern age where computers and other information technology made such systems possible. IBM provided state-of-he-art technology for cataloging the butchering. Acknowledging that the Nazi holocaust wasn't so extraordinary in relation to the world's history of bloodshed in no way diminishes the horror of the crimes. It should, rather, cast a damning eye on humanity on a whole and all the societies (which amounts to every civilization) that has committed such nightmarish acts.

What it shows is that the Europeans are downright uncivilized compared to, for example, the Chinese and Japanese or even us Americans.

	16-01-2004 01:58									#58
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quote: Originally posted by Hurricane I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning. The new pocket version also includes a very well-written and lengthy critisism on Daniel Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". A must-read to for anybody interested in how perfecty normal people became mass-murderers.

Indeed a very good book

	16-01-2004 01:59									#59
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quote: Originally posted by Ned What it shows is that the Europeans are downright uncivilized compared to, for example, the Chinese and Japanese or even us Americans.

Lame troll.

Communist Chinese State (1949-87)
-Executions of landlords, peasants, etc.
35,236,000

Japan's military (1936-45)
-Nanking massacre, etc.
5,964,000

And Americans, of course, have our own atrocities of slavery and Native American genocide. So nobody's **** doesn't stink, as much as you may try to spread the lye.

	16-01-2004 02:04									#60
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It was a simplified view of the numbers, you are correct, as I was comparing totals from all of the modern words great killers. The means between them all instances change but like I said before, killing innocent people is killing innocent people. Wasn't the point of the post.

In referance to some of the failed economic plans that have been mentioned, I would like you to imagine what would happen if Bush implemented a 5 year plan that killed 10 million people. Do you think most would blame Bush? Do you think that blame would pass on the the Republican party as a whole? Now imagine if that plan was so ludacris that everyone knew it would kill millions, but you forged ahead anyways for some ideological utopia you dream of (acceptable losses for utopia right)? The only differance between that and other mass murder is the methods, the ends remaint he same. It isn't an excuse for the Soviets or Communist Chinese.