KurtGodel77
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Posts posted by KurtGodel77
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Those numbers aren't even remotely accurate. Not even close. Nor is your interpretation of the reaction of "many reasonable people" to the use of incendiaries. Once again, all you're proving nothing more than you're completely ignorant about it.
And you didn't answer my question. What was the aim point? Not "What was destroyed" (which you don't even know, anyway), but "What was aimed at?" Of course, you couldn't answer that, because you're a blockhead.
Only by you. The way you use "race", it's synonymous with speciation. The way the rest of the non-Nazi world uses it, it's not. According to the authoritative body in charge of determining such things.
So you disagree with the entire zoological community...and I'm the one who's arrogant. Go figure.
For the connoisseur of error, your post offers a rich, delectable menu of items on which to feast. You've done an excellent job at keeping out filler (that is, factually correct material), upon which I congratulate you.
As an appetizer, you offer the connoisseur of error your interpretation of Dresden. The discriminating connoisseur notices your Dresden errors contain a number of ingredients. The main ingredient is that you ignore the basic fact the bombing raid did far more damage to Germany's people than to her war effort. But that error's flavor alone is rather dull, so you spice it up by throwing in some unjustified personal attacks. To complete the dish, you imply reasonable people weren't bothered by the fact a city was deliberately burned to the ground with incendiary bombs in the middle of winter. You showed your true culinary skill by adding that last ingredient with a light touch.
For the evening's main course, you served up the error of confusing your own personal views with those of the world's entire zoological community. You gained a little respect from those who appreciate error through the boldness of your dish. While many people confuse their own opinions with fact, few do so as convincingly and as dogmatically as you. Preparing such a dish required skill and hard work. The first step involved your statement that "the authoritative body that dictates such (the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature) specifically states that 'infrasubspecific entities' (i.e. human races) cannot be taxonomized zoologically, as they are not distinct enough." For the connoisseur of error, that statement had a surprisingly good aftertaste. It takes a while to realize that you, and not the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, are the one saying that "human races" and "infrasubspecific species" mean the same thing. The second ingredient in your dish is your misinterpretation of the Princeton definition of subspecies. Throw in the fact that you ignored the The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary definition of race I provided, and the dish is almost finished. But no Monkeyface dish of error would be complete without personal attacks, so you called me a Nazi to give the entrée its finishing touch.
For dessert, you implied you're not particularly arrogant. I don't want to criticize your skills as a chef of error, but this particular dish was a little too sweet and rich. That is, there was a little too much error, the error itself was too strong, and there was too little filler. My other criticism of your feast of error is that the after-dinner mint (a grammatical error involving incorrect placement of quotation marks) was served midway through the meal. But overall, I give you high marks for creating a post which any connoisseur of error would deeply appreciate.
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Answer a very simple question, then: what was the aim point for the bombers? Really, that should solve it: just tell me what the bombers were aiming at.
A fair question. Of the 28,410 houses in Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed by the bombing raids. The houses burned down because Allied bombers dropped 165 tons of incendiary bombs on the city; thereby creating a firestorm. It's the use of this type of bomb, and the resulting destruction of homes and lives, that deeply disturbed many reasonable people.
If you care to look up The Charter for the Nuremberg Trials, you'll find that article 6.B. lists as an example of a war crime, "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." Please explain to me the military necessity of destroying Dresden less than four months before the war ended. Explain why it was necessary to burn the city down with incendiary bombs just to shut down rail traffic for a few days. I'm listening.
Now you're an expert on military science as well? It's funny how you continually lecture me on things that I actually am an expert in.With all due respect, the field you're most expert at is making professional basketball players look humble.
Unfortunately, you're wrong again.
You're confusing the biological definition of "race" with the sociological definition. The specific biological definition of "subspecies" is not "race" - in fact, the authoritative body that dictates such (the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature) specifically states that "infrasubspecific entities" (i.e. human races) cannot be taxonomized zoologically, as they are not distinct enough - i.e., there's no process of speciation going on.
The topic of race is poorly understood. Princeton and the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature have perhaps arrived at differing definitions of race, and you know what? That's fine. Unlike you, I'm tolerant of different points of view. As long as someone acts in an appropriate way, I'll never call that person "Monkeyface."
Your talk about the biological versus the sociological definition of race merely confuses the issue. The word I looked up the definition for was subspecies--a word that has meaning in biology, but not in sociology. The word "race" can also have a biological definition, which is why Princeton listed it as a synonym for subspecies. According to The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary, race is
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.2. A population of organisms differing from others of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits; a subspecies.
3. A breed or strain, as of domestic animals.
Even you have to admit races as we traditionally describe them meet the requirements for definition 1. If races weren't more or less distinct groups, we wouldn't have affirmative action. If you couldn't tell them apart by genetically transmitted physical traits, there wouldn't be movies about people making themselves up to look like members of a different race.
And you know something? I like those differences. I'm happy about the fact the people of Japan look different from the people of Ireland or of Madagascar. If you didn't have something awful jammed up your rear end, you'd realize these differences are good, that they make the world richer and more diverse.
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Dude, chill out. I didn't want to bring up the whole "subspecies" thing at all, but Monkeyface kept jumping down my throat about it. If you honestly think I deserve to be banned for arguing about whether race means the same thing as subspecies, you really need to loosen up. Much like Monkeyface.
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I'm sure you'll be entirely disinterested to find the bombing of Dresden fiths the definition of a legitimate military operation.
Glad to know you approve of extermination bombings. That fits nicely with your earlier comment about how thousands of years of human history have shown genocide works.
Jesus Christ, if you took just thirty seconds to try to back up your own nonsense, you'd find the post-war Strategic Bombing Survey is actually available online, and explains virtually everything I've been telling you. But I suppose the USSBS isn't reliable either...I've read about why the bombing was supposedly justified, and you know what? I'm not buying what you're selling. You don't create a firestorm in the middle of a city and explain later how it was a legitimate military operation, or that you wanted a few rail lines destroyed, or that there were a few factories shut down a few weeks early. There were ways to achieve the legitimate military objective of shutting down those rail lines--ways that didn't involve mass murder. The Dresden bombing violated Articles 23, 25, 26, and 27 of the Annex to the fourth Hague Convention. Therefore the bombings were a war crime.
You defined speciation, you !@#$ing idiot! The divergence of a species into separate subspecies due to isolation over a course of time. "Ah, but I didn't use the word, so it doesn't count!" You are absolutely unreal.
At least you're developing a dim awareness that I didn't use the word speciation. That's a start. It's true I used the terms "race" and "subspecies" interchangeably. If you look up the word subspecies, you'll see the following:
n : (biology) a taxonomic group that is a division of a species; usually arises as a consequence of geographical isolation within a species [syn: race]Hey, Princeton thinks "subspecies" and "race" are synonyms. But don't let that stop you from calling me a Nazi for embracing that same definition.
This situation is a good example of why you have so little credibility in my eyes. I use the word "subspecies" as a synonym for race--just like Princeton. I went on to say that I wanted the world's races to continue to exist. You responded by accusing me of producing "nonsense about racial purity based on blacks being a separate and distinct species." Maybe it's too much to expect you to understand the difference between the words "species" and "subspecies." Hey, kingdom, family, order, class, genus, species, subspecies--they all mean the same thing, right?
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If you're accusing me of skipping the ninth century stuff, you're right. But I read the portion of the article which had to do with the time frame we're discussing, and guess what? You're wrong. Hey, if it makes it any easier on your ego, you can try to pass this off as some Wikipedia error.
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There's no apostrophe in the possessive form of "its." Since you like well-documented things so much, try looking up the Geneva convention's definition of a war crime. You'll be interested to find the Dresden bombing fits.Uh...no. I can't really blame you for parrotting the myth, since it's so established (and, by the way, it was started by Goebbels. You're repeating Nazi propaganda, what a shocker). But the decisions leading up to Dresden are well-documented, including the industry in the city. It's importance as a transport hub is well-documented.As for the Goebbels stuff--of course Goebbels complained. A city full of innocent German women and children had just been callously murdered by British and American forces. Any propaganda minister from any nation would have made an issue out of such an act, and rightly so. What was Goebbels supposed to say--"I applaud the decency and restraint shown by Roosevelt and Churchill. I feel the military objective of stopping rail traffic for a few days justified the destruction of one of Germany's largest cities and richest cultural centers. I don't feel those nations should have pursued other, more humane ways to stop that rail traffic. Come to think of it, I'm not at all bothered by the fact the city was filled with refugees from the Soviet invasion. Nor do I feel the Geneva Convention should apply to nations that are a few months away from winning the war."
I can quote you a day-by-day account of the targets the US and British Air Forces hit from 1943-1945 in the ETO.Then why don't you? You keep talking about all this wonderful documentation you have that refutes everything I'm saying. But if your memory of your documentation is half as bad as your memory of my posts, you won't be able to refute much.
You don't actually know what "speciation" means, do you?
Because you did say it; you practically defined it. Wrong, again. What a surprise. Try actually reading my posts in that thread, and show me where I used the word speciation. You can't, because I didn't. If you're willing to confidently make inaccurate statements about a thread I can easily look up, odds are you're at least equally likely to make inaccurate statements about documentation which you're too lazy or too arrogant to reveal.
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I probably read thousands of pages of WWII history before I really learned to read between the lines. There's the surface view, which no doubt you've heard: Germany was unfairly punished by the Versailles Treaty. The Allies came to realize this after Hitler took power, Hitler was a crazy expansionist who wanted to conquer the world. After their appeasement efforts failed, Britain and France finally went to war with Hitler over Poland.
But digging beneath the surface brings up tough questions. For instance, every history of WWII I've read clearly indicates that once Poland received a protection guarantee from Britain and France, it became very eager to go to war against Germany. The Polish confidently predicted a march on Berlin. But why were they this eager? France's plan was to hide behind the Maginot Line and wait for the Germans to attack. Hitler understood this, which is why he began the war with the bulk of his army on his eastern front. You'd think that anything France's enemies knew, its allies ought to have known also. Did the French deliberately mislead the Polish about what their strategy would be? While that seems very strange, the alternative is even more strange: that the Polish government deliberately chose a policy which would result in its annihilation.
Secondly, there's the question of whether the Polish government inflicted atrocities upon ethnic Germans for the purpose of provoking an attack. In a book praised by The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, John Toland mentioned that a report of one atrocity in particular deeply influenced Hitler's decision to go to war. However, Toland mentioned the numbers in the report had been exaggerated by a subordinate. But was the original estimate, with the smaller numbers, correct? Toland provides no guidance about that question.
I can't say I blame him. Suppose the Polish government was guilty of inflicting atrocities on the German minority to provoke a war. Had Toland written that the guilt for starting the war rested with Poland and perhaps France, the Jewish-owned N.Y. Times certainly wouldn't have praised his book. He'd have to listen to creeps like Monkeyface calling him a Nazi. The general public would assume there must be some truth to these accusations, and so wouldn't buy his book.
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1) Wikipedia isn't a reliable source.
Neither are you.
2) Are you brain-damaged? That's not even what the article says!!! It says that the Ukraine was ruled by Russia from 1648 to 1993; from 1918-1920, Ukranian separatists declared a series of republics, battled the Bolsheviks unsuccessfully, and were invaded by Poland. Did you actually read what you linked?The Wikipedia article had this to say:
A brief period of independence (1917-1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917 was ended by Ukraine's absorption into the Soviet Union in 1922Your original point was "Soviets bad, Germans not quite as bad." Except that far more Poles died under the Germans than Soviets.1) That's not necessarily true, and 2) more people died overall from the Soviets than from the Nazis.
Dresden was a clear-cut viable military target, bombed in a clear-cut legitimate military operation with clear-cut tactical and operational goals relating to the front lines. That 50k people died in the bombing does not make it genocidal; that was not the intent.After accusing me of ignorance of Dresden, you write this? Amazing. The purported reason for the Dresden raid was to take out a German railway station. Fine. That's a legitimate military target. The rails in Dresden were up and running a few days after the attack. The purported objective wasn't meaningfully achieved. The real objective was. First high explosive bombs were dropped, to blow the roofs off people's homes and apartments. Then incendiary bombs were dropped to start these homes ablaze. As intended, a firestorm was created around the city, sucking in people and oxygen. Temperatures reached up to 1500 degrees; hot enough to vaporize bone. The city was destroyed, and an untold number of men, women, children, and babies were burned to death or buried beneath rubble.
The bombing of residential urban areas was a war crime as defined by the Geneva treaty. The Dresden bombing raid certainly fit that definition. Shutting down the rail lines could have been more effectively and more humanely achieved had the Allies bombed miles of rail lines leading into Dresden; without actually hitting the city itself. But the Dresden raid wasn't about rail lines. It was about extermination.
Quoting the example of Allied air operations around D-Day, too, is stupid (for anyone else, I'd merely say it's disingenious. For you, it's a sadly typical act of idiocy and ignorance). It is, again, a complete mischaracterization of the air campaign, both the prelude to D-Day, operations during D-Day and the immediately following period, and longer-term post-Normandy operations. You have managed to get preciesly NO facts right about it. Not a single one. Most people, even completely ignorant on the subject, would probably manage to stumble over one correct fact by random accident. You can't even manage that.As usual, you're long on personal invective, and short on facts. I wrote the American Air Force focused on tactical targets in the wake of the D-Day invasion. You responded to that factually accurate statement with a full paragraph of venom, but no actual information which would contradict it.
I went back and reread all my posts in that thread. Not once did I suggest the world's races constitute different species. Nor did I say a speciation event had taken place. I didn't say it, I didn't imply it, and I didn't and don't believe it. You're dead wrong about my posts in that thread. Apparently, being wrong is a habit you've formed.
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I kinda enjoyed reading the history exchange, now I have to read about the bombing of dresden to know what industrial and military sites and economy they had at that time, I'm sure I watched it on the history channel and the military channel and pbs...But this is like watching cnn and foxnews, you still don't know the truth untill you research it thouroughly or at least semi research it..Ctm is usually pretty acurate with military history, kurt, this is the first time I have read your post on ppp, so no disrepect, I will check it on independent history and military sites, appears to be a good read that I will be entering. and learning further......
Here's a good BBC article to get you started.
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Your "proof" of it keeps changing. Now you seem to be saying he was "deeply pro-Soviet" because of Versailles.
Just for fun, I'll count the number of incorrect statements you make. This is number 1.
Don't take my word for it, look it up. You'll find that when you look historical facts up, they turn out to be different than when you make them up.I did look it up, and guess what?
A brief period of independence (1917-1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917 was ended by Ukraine's absorption into the Soviet Union in 1922.Now you're up to two incorrect statements.
None of the countries you mentioned are actually Soviet neighbors.Incorrect statement #3. Turkey is one of the countries I mentioned, and it bordered the Soviet Union.
That leaves only...oh...maybe five million other Poles unaccounted for. I suppose they just moved to CheektowagaProbably most of these people starved to death. But was it the Soviets or the Germans who starved them? Odds are neither country exactly went out of its way to fatten them up too much. But Germany's food situation was never great, and by the end of the war was an absolute disaster.
Not that I believe that...but hey, it's your racial theories...I've never written nor implied races have differing values, so now you're up to incorrect statement #4.
Olay, so you don't know sh-- about Dresden either.Incorrect statement #5.
I'm curious as to why you'd think eyewitness reports are so completely reliable, when ever single remotely intelligent person on the planet is aware that's not the case.Are eyewitness accounts of all atrocities unreliable, or does your logic only apply to Allied atrocities?
Would you like me to list all the major war industries in Dresden? All the legitimate military targets?Are you honestly saying the Dresden attack was done to hit military targets? That's shocking, even for you. The end of the war was less than four months away. Under those circumstances, you don't murder 60,000 - 300,000+ women and children, in the hopes that you'll shut down some factory a few weeks early. You bomb enemy soldiers to end the war that much more quickly. The American Air Force focused on tactical bombing following the D-Day invasion. Later on, we switched back to extermination bombings. The Dresden raid was aimed against civilians, pure and simple. If you're trying to refute something as obvious as this, you're even less honest than I'd thought.
No, you said that because of racial isolation over 100k years, Homo Sapiens has undergone speciation.Incorrect statement #6.
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Love your description of Monkeyface.
To lighten the mood a little, I'll throw in this link. -
My point is that you are taking a quote out of context and making it something that its not.
Had I written "genocide works"--in any context at all--Monkeyface would have used it to support his claims about me being some kind of Nazi. But that doesn't give me the right to act in the same way. Below is his quote in its entirety:
Oh yeah, of course. An international organization devoted to forcing people to get along against their better judgement was bound to stick their nose in and act counter to 5000 years of factual human history demonstrating that, not to be too blunt, genocide works.Okay, maybe that's a little over the top. But anyone who's raised cats and small children knows that sometimes you just have to let them resolve their own issues with each other. But nation-states are somehow "different".
I interpreted the whole "a little over the top" remark to mean Monkeyface didn't want to quite come out and endorse genocide. But that doesn't mean he wasn't thinking it. And even with the slight pullback, he was still endorsing something awfully close to genocide.
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Kurt, Click Here
Now, realize that he was suggesting that sometimes they have to work out their own problems (in a way the World deem's acceptable) for it to actually be anything other then a bandaid.
Thats it.
And you say that I'm the one who makes something out of nothing. Seesh.
Several points:
1) I already know what the word hyperbole means.
2) You, not Monkeyface, are the one stipulating that the problems need to be worked out in a way the world deems acceptable.
3) Genocide against the people of Lebanon has been done before, under almost exactly the same circumstances as at present. This happened while the rest of the world was standing by and letting them work their problems out.
4) Some people are capable of genocide, or else it wouldn't happen. Monkeyface certainly seems more heartless/capable of committing genocide than anyone else on these boards. Some Lebanese harmed Jews, so Monkeyface endorsed genocide (or something very close to genocide) as an appropriate response. That goes a long way towards explaining why he apparently doesn't have a problem with the atrocities the Allies inflicted upon the Germans during and after WWII.
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...case in point. Once again, we're back to "FDR was a Stalinist stooge." Or "Stalin was FDR's stooge." One of the two, at least. I'd wish you'd just pick one; it's so hard to follow your nonsense when you keep changing the story.
My "story" is simple and unchanging: FDR was deeply pro-Soviet. You often remember my posts incorrectly, which makes it seem to you like I keep changing my mind.
Not conicidentally, the lack of Western (not "Allied") interest in containing Soviet expansionism is concomitant with the lack of Soviet expansionism in the '20s. The Soviets did not "invade" the Ukraine...the Ukraine was Soviet.
Dead wrong. You're really wrong here. I feel myself drowning in the ocean of your wrongness.
On 1 November 1918, an independent Republic of Western Ukraine was declared after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On 22 January 1919, the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Republic of Western Ukraine united and established an independent Ukrainian state, recognized by over 40 other nations.The new government, however, could not maintain its authority in the face of civil strife and the threat of the approaching Bolshevik, pro-Tsarist, and Polish forces.
And I've already debunked the "Soviet neighbors not having credible militaries"...by illustrating that they in fact DID.Wrong. I wrote that many Soviet neighbors were forbidden to have credible militaries. You "refuted" this by talking about a different Soviet neighbor which did have a credibly military.
When the Soviets invaded Poland in 1920, did either France or Britain declare war on the Soviets? No. Neither did they do so in 1939, when the Soviets invaded Poland once again. Maybe the threat of a few British or French soldiers would be enough to deter Soviet expansionism when the Soviet Union was weak. But a Soviet Union that could throw over 300 divisions into an invasion wouldn't worry about that. If need be, those 300+ divisions could deal with French intervention by conquering France.Once again, you fail to understand historical fact. What Eastern and Central European countries weren't prosperous? Bulgaria and Albania. Maybe Romania. That's about it. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Austria, Poland...all had relatively strong healthy economies (relative to everyone else in the world...this is the depression era we're talking about, after all). All also had mutual defense pacts in place with Britain and/or France through the '20s and early '30s to contain Soviet aggression.Ah. Historians whitewashed Soviet atrocities in Poland and blamed the Nazis because they're bolshevik sympathizers. Last time I heard this, coincidentally, was from the Nazis.You're obviously unfamilar with the Soviet execution of the Polish officer corps, and their efforts to blame this on the Nazis.
You're callous tone you've chosen with respect to the Holocaust is noted.
As is your grammar error.
On a more serious note, the Soviets murdered more people than did the Nazis. Assuming each victim was equally human, the sum of Soviet destruction was worse.Do you even know what happened at Dresden? Even money says you dust of that moldy old myth about USAAF Mustangs strafing innocent civilians on the roads leading out of Dresden...Yes, I know what happened at Dresden. British and American planes destroyed a city of no military value. According to the official police report, Germany lost as many people in that bombing than the U.S. lost in the entire Vietnam War. But the official police report could not take into account bodies buried under rubble, nor those who would later die due to homelessness in the February snow. The actual civilian death toll may have been several times as high as the American death toll during Vietnam. As for the U.S. planes strafing innocent civilians: I've seen video footage of deeply emotional Dresden survivors describing this strafing. I'm curious as to why you think I should write these people off as liars.
But whether the strafing took place or not, the Dresden bombing was clearly a war crime as defined by the Geneva convention, and an act of genocide against the people of Germany.
You're the one that said 100k years of racial isolation caused speciation in Homo Sapiens.Wrong. I never wrote anything which would imply the world's races are different species; nor have I ever felt the world's races are different species.
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You didn't interpret my statement as hyperbole because of something Ronald Reagan said 20 years ago?
Wrong. I didn't interpret your statement as hyperbole because of events that happened 20 years ago. Also, you implied that any diplomatic solution would only be temporary, whereas your "genocide works" proposal would be a more permanent solution. A final solution, if you will.
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You see, it's all well-and-good to say "The Allied powers wanted to aid the Bolsheviks, so they didn't commit to propping up the Russian Monarchy"
Your post is replete with errors, so I'll start by addressing this one. I never wrote that the Allied powers wanted to aid the Bolsheviks, at least not during the early '20s. FDR was deeply interested in helping the Soviet Union expand, but that didn't come until later. Rather, I feel that during the '20s, there was a lack of Allied interest in containing Soviet expansionism. This lack of interest was shown by Allied inaction during the invasion of the Ukraine, as well as by the treaties which forbade many of the Soviet Union's neighbors from having credible militaries.
That containment lasted until the rearming of Germany shielded the USSR from any meaningful Western response to westward expansion.You mean like the meaningful Western response to the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine?
Which Western nations do you think could have contained Soviet expansion? The isolationist U.S.? Britain, with its relatively small army? France, a nation whose people often saw deep similiarities between the Russian Revolution and the French? The French people weren't told about Soviet mass murder, and radical leftist groups were (and are) very influential in France. Expecting France of all nations to fight a war against Soviet expansionism is getting one's hopes rather high.The Soviet Union didn't absorb the Baltics, Eastern Poland, or Bessarabia until Germany rearmed. While Germany was disarmed...the Soviet Union did nothing. Ergo, your whole argument is fallacious based on that pesky little "historical fact" thingy you keep ignoring.You've fallen into the classic trap of assuming correlation implies causation. It doesn't. The first time the Soviet Union invaded Poland, the former's military was weak. This was in 1920, long before Hitler took control of Germany. The Polish were able to throw the Soviet invaders out of their country, and to actually move the Polish/Soviet border east. The Soviets became less adventuresome for a while, focusing on pacifying their own country, while building up heavy industry and their military. An effort which would have been good enough to repulse a Soviet invasion in 1920 wouldn't have been nearly enough to help in 1940.
Because the driving force behind NATO - US involvement - was absent minus US ratification of the League of Nations, you moron. The rest of Europe was too war-weary. Really, you can't just selectively ignore facts.
Once again, you failed to understand my post. I suggested the nations of Eastern and Central Europe could have been allowed to be prosperous, with reasonable militaries. Tying these nations together in an anti-Soviet alliance would have been enough to prevent Soviet expansion, even without American military involvement.
Instead, the Treaty of Versailles kept "Soviet mass murder" out of Eastern Europe, as I already outlined above.Tell that to the 7 million Ukrainian dead.
For example, I'm sure if the Poles had a strong military, they would have contained Bolshevik expansion. Oh, wait...they did. It's called the Russo-Polish war. Ended with the Treaty of Riga in 1920.You're living in a dream world if you think Poland could have stopped a Soviet invasion once the Soviets had finished building up their industry and military. It's a question of numbers.
Well, guess what? No one knew the Molotov-Ribbertrop Pact include provisions for the partition of Poland until after the Soviets walked across the border. That's why that provision of the Non-Aggression pact is referred to as "secret". True, but hardly relevant. The promise Britain and France gave Poland protected that nation against German aggression, but not against Soviet aggression. When both nations proceeded to invade Poland, the Western democracies went to war against Germany but not the Soviets.
I'll ignore the callous tone you've chosen with respect to Polish victims of Soviet mass murder. The figures you're using for Nazi killings are probably inflated. The Soviets often liked to blame their own killings on the Nazis. Many historians had a far more favorable view of the Soviets than of the Nazis, and so didn't inquire too closely about these claims. While neither the Nazis nor the Soviets shied away from brutal acts, the Soviets were typically worse.Pitiful. The Nazis were much more efficient. They achieved a rate close to one in five.!@#$ed up theories about the Democratic party's complicity in German genocide as perpetrated by StalinActually, FDR directly took part in genocide against the German people through the Dresden bombing and other extermination bombings. He was also indirectly responsible, by pursuing policies intended to put much of Europe into Soviet hands.
or nonsense about racial purity based on blacks being a separate and distinct species.A separate and distinct species? You really don't understand my posts, do you?
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C'mon AD admit it - you start these monstrosities on purpose, right?
Fittingly, AD began this thread by talking about the Aryan Brotherhood. After being called a hippie, Arm started promoting eugenics. Then we heard about my earlier statements opposing "marital genocide," as well as Monkeyface's view that "genocide works." And your problem with a thread like this is . . . ?
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Funny how you're the only one that picked that up. Probably because everyone else is aware enough to understand hyperbole.
I'll provide a little historical context for your genocide quote. In the early '80s, PLO terrorists operating in Lebanon attacked northern Israel. Israel responded with violent force; upon which the PLO terrorists fled into populated areas. Ronald Reagan described the ensuing conflict:
Israeli planes, gunboats, and artillery units had begun attacking the fringes of West Beirut in what appeared to be a relentless and indiscriminate bombardment of neighborhoods filled with Lebanese civilians who had absolutely no role in the Israeli-PLO conflict. . . . Then on August 4 . . . I was awakened at 6:30 AM by my national security advisor. He said that the Israelis had just moved into new positions within West Beirut and were shelling the city with a savage ferocity that was killing more and more civilians. . . . mounting attacks by Israel were taking an increasing death toll on the women and children of Beirut. . . . Despite our appeals for restraint, Israel opened a new and even more brutal attack on civilian neighborhoods in Beirut that sickened me and many others in the White House. . . . I told [begin] it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word ‘Holocaust’ deliberately and said the symbol of his country was becoming, ‘a picture of a seven month old baby with its arms blown off.’ . . . After the phone calls, Israel reduced the intensity of its bombardment in Beirut—but its ground and air forces then began attacking populated areas in northern Lebanon, apparently with the intent of eradicating PLO strongholds in that region. . . . In Beirut, [a minor militia group] entered a Palestine refugee camp and massacred men, women, and children. The Israelis did nothing to prevent or halt it. George Schultz and I met and agreed upon a blunt statement which he delivered to the Israeli ambassador. . . . Brezhnev sent me a message accusing Israel of perpetrating a ‘bloody orgy,’ and implied we were a party to it. In February 1983, after a judicial panel asserted that he had been indirectly responsible for the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps, Ariel Sharon resigned as Israel’s minister of defense. . . . I hoped this would mark a change in Israeli policies and help get the peace process started again.Israel has already committed what Reagan described as a "Holocaust" against the people of Lebanon. The circumstances were very similar to those at present. That's why I didn't interpret your endorsement of genocide against Lebanese as hyperbole.
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If by token you mean having British, French and US soldiers physically fighting in Russia in 1918-1919, I agree with you.. Of course after failing to do anything with an actual military presence in 1919, you wave the magic history wand and say that the West should have done something in the '20s, and then things would have been better. (An appropriate smiley doesn't exist for this interaction)
You'll recollect that the Russian government made enormous sacrifices during WWI; and that these sacrifices had a lot to do with why it was overthrown. As Russia was fighting on the Allied side, other Allied nations felt a little guilty about this, and sent a few troops to help the remnants of the old government fight the communists. Not enough troops to make a real difference, but it did allow the communist propaganda machine to paint the nationalists as deeply compromised by non-Russian connections.
After the Allied governments proved themselves unwilling or unable to save the Russian nationalist government, their actions helped pave the way for future Soviet expansion. As I mentioned earlier, the treaty of Versailles limited Germany to a merely token army. The Treaty of Saint Germain did the same to Austria, the Treaty of Trianon disarmed Hungary, the treaty of Neuilly disarmed Bulgaria, and the treaty of Sèvres was intended to disarm Turkey. Am I the only one who sees that crippling the militaries of the nations to the west of the Soviet Union might not have been the best way to contain Soviet military expansion?
Why was it necessary to wait until after WWII to construct NATO? Why not do it after the end of WWI? Such an alliance would have prevented WWII, while keeping Soviet mass murder out of most of Europe. It wouldn't even have been necessary for the isolationist U.S. to make any real commitments. Simply allowing the nations of Central and Eastern Europe to be prosperous, and to build up their own militaries, would have been more than adequate to peacefully prevent Soviet westward expansion. Had the Ukraine been part of this alliance, the Ukrainian famine would have been prevented.
But other than sending a few troops to help the Russian nationalists, the Western democracies did precisely nothing to contain Soviet expansionism until after WWII. No mutual assistance treaties, no pacts, nothing. Poland is a good example. The British and French governments agreed to protect Poland against a German invasion, but not against a Soviet invasion. Well guess what? The Soviets invaded, and literally decimated the population they conquered. One person out of every ten was murdered. Earlier, the Ukraine had experienced a similar invasion followed by mass murder, so Western democracies knew what to expect. But apparently, they didn't care.
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Earlier you were advocating genocide against the Lebanese. Now you're lying about long-range German foreign policy goals. Keep up the good work.
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5000 years of factual human history demonstrating that, not to be too blunt, genocide works.
Thanks for providing your usual level of insight and moral guidance. This one's going in my sig.
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I'd also like to know how Hitler "contained" Soviet expansion by giving them Poland and the Baltics. Kurt also conveniently ignores that the West was still war weary in the '30 and that the West's efforts to contain Bolsheviks in 1918 were futile.
Gotta love Kurt's nostalgia thinking that Nazi Germany was the only bulwark against communism. Never mind that a major reason for Hitler's rise was West's mistaken belief that Hitler was the lesser of the two evils. History tells us they miscalculated both on a major scale.
You bring up a good point, in that from the fall of 1939 to the spring of 1941, Nazi Germany did nothing to contain Soviet expansionism. As you point out, the Soviets seized that opportunity to grab the eastern portion of Poland, the Baltic states, part of Finland, and other territory.
But the long-range goal of German foreign policy was the destruction of the Soviet government, as shown by the German attack on the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941.
The West's "efforts" to contain Blosheviks in 1918 were merely token. I'm not saying the U.S. or European democracies should have launched a war of liberation in the Soviet Union. But some containment might have been nice. Take the Ukraine, which achieved independence during the Russian Revolution, only to be invaded by the Soviet government a few years later. Subsequently, the Soviet government used hunger as a weapon to kill 7 - 10 million Ukrainians, while selling their food on the London Exchange. Had the Western democracies pledged themselves to defend the Ukraine against Soviet expansion, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened, and a holocaust would have been prevented. Western democracies didn't start pledging themselves to defend anyone against Soviet expansionism until after WWII. By that time, Sovet hegemony had spread deep into the heart of Central Europe.
But if the Western democracies were unwilling or unable to defend nations such as the Ukraine from Soviet expansion, they at least should have put Germany in a position where it could have done something. Instead, the Versailles Treaty limited Germany to a merely token army. Suppose Germany had remained demilitarized. Once the Soviets had completed their industrialization and militarization program, it would have been relatively easy for their army to annex every nation east of France. And, to be honest, I believe the Soviets' 300+ divisions would have easily defeated France's 100 or so divisions. And as for Germany, the Soviets might not have had to invade it at all. Because the Versailles Treaty kept the Germans in dire conditions where food often ran short, the communists stood an excellent chance of overthrowing Germany's government.
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If you think Ehrenberg was the Minister of Propaganda setting the policy of genocide for the Red Army...it rather calls into question your entire interpretation of Soviet policy, seeing how you can't even get that rather basic fact correct.
One also has to wonder, if Ehrenberg was calling for a genocide campaign against Germans, why he didn't just exhort Red Army soldiers to marry them...
I never said Ehrenberg was "setting the policy of genocide for the Red Army." Rather, he was carrying out Stalin's wishes that the Germans be treated brutally. When you're finished acting like a spoiled child, I suggest you read up on the Soviet deportation of Germans
The deportation was genocide, as the following link describes. The board software messes the link up because it's too long, so you'll need to copy and paste it into the the top of your browser:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_number_of_deaths_in_connection_with_expulsion_of_Germans_after_WWII
The fact the Soviet government murdered as many as three million Germans after the war lessens the credibility of your claim that they didn't want to murder German civilians while the war was still underway. Ehrenberg himself cited one of Stalin's directives as the inspiration for his command to kill German men, women, and children. But whether the Soviet genocide against the German people began during or after the war, it was still genocide.
Speaking of which, I suggest you read up on the Soviet genocide against the Polish, the Soviet genocide against the Ukrainians, the Soviet genocide against the Lithuanians, as well as a general summary of of communist mass murder.
Right now, you've gotten too caught up in trying to win this debate. I'm asking you to put aside the instinct to argue for a little while. Realize the victims of communism were human beings. Their lives mattered; and the depth of the tragedy increased with each new grave. Contrary to popular belief, this tragedy could have been avoided had the Western democracies acted differently.
The communist track record was clear--Lenin was a brutal murderer, and Stalin was even worse. Western governments knew this, and they didn't care. From 1918 - 1945, the only nations which took an active interest in containing Soviet expansionism were Nazi Germany and its allies. Understanding how and why Western democracies came to be indifferent to Soviet mass murder is a good first step toward preventing history from repeating itself.
So Liberals...
in Politics, Polls, and Pundits
Posted
I see you're using essentially the same ingredients as last time. The dish itself, however, is new.
I'll admit some of those ingredients have a very subtle flavor that I didn't quite catch the first time. For instance, you accuse me of not addressing the point of the raids; when in fact the number of houses destroyed does address the real purpose of the Dresden raids. Confusing the stated purpose of the raids with their real purpose is a delicate touch, and a sign that you've truly mastered the art of error.
But you're not always subtle. Twice now you've point blank denied factually accurate statements about Dresden: one about the number of tons of incendiary bombs dropped; the other about the number of houses destroyed. Bold statements like these mark you as a courageous chef of error.
But no chef of error's training is truly complete until he or she embraces Lenin's maxim to always accuse your enemy of that which you yourself are guilty. This is perhaps the highest form of the art of error, and one which you have a true gift for. That you would accuse me of failing to understand the Stedman's dictionary entry was a culinary masterpiece.
But you reached your apex of your skill as a chef of error by accusing me of failing to understand the roots of the moral outrage over Dresden. Lacking any moral sense yourself, you naturally cannot comprehend why others might be outraged by the wanton and deliberate destruction of so many innocent human lives. You yourself experience outrage only when someone disagrees with your ideology, or offends your ego by questioning your authority. For instance, you feel someone who earned a PhD in physics from MIT has no right to question your own interpretation of the Big Bang; and you're offended that someone like me sees the question of authority differently.
For most people, outrage isn't nearly as ego-driven as it is for you. If an average person hears about a city such as Dresden being needlessly destroyed, they'll feel sad or angry. Your dual concern for ideology and your ego blinds you to the human element of the Dresden Holocaust, and to the fact the tragedy was clearly and wholly avoidable. You may have actually started believing your own propaganda, and this hasn't hurt your ability to please connoisseurs of error.